I don't agree with those figures, but even if they were accurate, I have to ask: so what? How many of those 75,000 are going to buy the game now, as opposed to before? It's not more than the number of people that are alienated by this move. More importantly, stopping those people comes at the price of hamstringing the game for the rest of us. That is ill-advised at best.

We're drifting far off-topic though. This thread wasn't meant to point out the stupidity of Infinity Ward's move (there's a separate thread just for that), but to point out how they, and especially Game Informer, are being dicks to the consumers.

Isn't pointing out the stupidity of Infinity Ward's move part of pointing out how they, along with Game Informer, are being dicks to the consumers?

:P

Not necessarily. I've noticed that the gaming community (at least those who pay attention to these things) are really more like sheep than people. Sure, they'll huff and puff at this news, but damned near all of the people who were going to buy a copy are going to buy one anyways. They'll be pissed, and they may not be as willing to buy Infinity Ward's next game (because they didn't enjoy Modern Warfare 2 as much), but they'll still buy this one.

As for Game Informer, it's not like consumer subscriptions form the bulk of their revenue. Again, readers are the real product, and the game industry is the real customer. This is especially true for the magazine that's affiliated with Gamestop.

I sure as will not let IW have even a cent of my money for this game. Hopefully others react the same way.

The question is, will there be enough of you to make a difference?

It wont matter either way, Digi Distro numbers are kept confidential so noone will ever know aside from a few folk at IW, Activision and their digital sales outlets. Its become an issue of face now, not only for the company but the executives within IW/Act who are responsible for the decision. Console dwarfs PC in terms of sales so their jobs are safe regardless - their product will still make massive profits. Regardless of how it falls out, even if sales stagnate at 20% of projected, they can just blame piracy or dwindling PC market or cook up any number of other scapegoats for their own bosses and the shareholders. Admitting they were wrong is probably impossible for them at this point, so regardless of whether the decision was good or bad they have no choice but to ride it out and see what happens.

 @ some previous posts: Dedicated server issue has nothing to do with piracy, FYI. Whether its IW.net or the master server browser, all multiplayer games of this type communicate with a master server which dissemenates information on the locations of the dedi or p2p listen servers, not to mention the dedicated servers themselves communicate player stats and data themselves. If their keyauth is so fail that they cannot tell a legit key from a keygenned one, or tell a legit rfom a cracked server ( most games with master servers can) , then it is a general flaw with their keygen and auth technology - it has nothing to do with whether or not players end up playing on a hosted server or a p2p listen server.

  402 even said, it was the Steam integration that was meant to combat piracy, not the server issue.

 In any case, it is a shame, MW had looked to be pretty fun , I had fun with CoD4 as well. IW has said that fun is not to be had here on the PC version of their product, and such is their right. I thought them effectively firing their PC community of players was silly, but oh well. I do take umbrage at the words and attitude of the 2 wonderful " professionals" quoted in the GI article - which will stick with me much much longer than the dissapointment of IW trashing an otherwise good game.

Why not have the option? I mean the ability to give you the option to play and host your own servers is already there, if you're going to make a change, why not give players the option to play with peer to peer or on dedicated servers? It really makes no sense not to.

I wish it was. Sadly, the number of games pirated on PC nowadays VASTLY outnumbers the numbers actually sold - and this functionality is critical for pirates to be able to play multiplayer games... whereas many normal players don't need it... which means not only are the majority of players pirates, but pirates have a much larger % of players(nearly 100%) which are effected by this change. So guessing that 75% of the petition signers are planning to pirate it could actually be a conservative estimate.

And the answer is no, because for the handful of people that actually would have payed for the product that boycott it, there will be replacement sales by people who want to play with friends, and are forced to buy it instead of pirate it.

it's not about the people not buying the game because of it.
I'll buy it anyways (have it preordered), but especially because of that, I really want the user created mods and maps (if they could implement these without dedicated servers I wouldn't mind), cause I want the product I'm paying for to have the features I want...