And that seems to be a problem here.  According to the licensing agreements, you don't actually own software.  You are paying companies that make it, for the priviledge of using it.  Unless they agreement gives you the ability to mod the game, or do tweaks, you can violate the agreement they set up.  In regards to what you wrote, if you then go into the game, and hack it so that you have an edge when playing online over people who don't have it, the company feels you have damaged their product by ruining the community. 

BUT, the nature of PC gaming is the belief you have a right to modify the game as you like, and taking that away is upsetting the PC gaming community who wants to mod.  However, I believe we are witnessing a shift here where the game companies are taking over the modding of things, and then reselling them, because it is more profitable.  It would be good to be aware of this and speak out against it.  But, the wallet is the ultimate decider of things.  The industry will go where it sees the money is.

In short, you will likely have the ability to do what you want with the game, so long as the major publishers maximize profits from doing this.  And now, welcome to the world of videogames as Hollywood.  Hollywood, for example, cracked down on individuals who happened to sell edited versions of films to Christian Fundamentalists, so they had "clean" versions of their films.  I believe these individuals also got the original copy to.  The creators of the film didn't want their works tinkered with, so thus the crack down.

I would hardly call IW's desicion "maximizing profits" Because it didn't help against piracy, and it certainly didn't help sales, all it did was to piss people off. They tried to fight piracy at the costy of customer experience, and they failed. Sure they were thinking logically, but they were applying the wrong kind of logic.

Maximizing profits isn't something look at just a single instance.  It involves a big picture.  In this, Activision decided to save on development costs by putting out the exact same game across all platforms.  This enabled them to do a unified QA on the content, to make sure it is what they felt optimal across all platforms.  They did the same with the playermatching, dropping the dedicated servers.  It comes out of the logic of business executives who will end up shorting aspects of the game community, for what they see is the bigger picture.  Does it suck if they ignore some people?  You bet it is, but they try to think strategically.  Their job, as a publically traded company, is to maximize profits. 

They are doing it wrong.

Indeed, the biggest earners, Valve and Blizzard, still manage to make ridiculous amounts of money because they cater to their costumers.