Black Ops To Offer Dedicated Serversâ€¦ With A Catch

shane · September 13, 2010

When Modern Warfare 2 was released back in 2009, PC gamers were outraged that the game didn’t allow them to set up their own servers for multiplayer. At the time, Infinity Ward/Activision’s response was “We’re not all that worried about it.” But, as well told you back in May, Activision has changed their policy for Modern Warfare: Black Ops. They said the game will feature dedicated servers, but we recently learned the catch:* You’ll have to use Gameservers.com, exclusively, to run your matches.

“We are extremely excited about this unprecedented relationship with Activision to offer dedicated servers exclusively for Black Ops”, said GameServers CEO David Aninowsky. “We are placing a great amount of pressure on ourselves to ensure that we exceed any and all expectations.”

The official explanation for the use of Game Servers mentions that the service will help keep cheaters and hackers at bay.

Treyarch Community Manager Josh Olin told IGN.com: “If you rent a server, you will still have the ability to Kick, Ban, and Configure it the way you see fit,” Olin added. “Of course Ranked servers will have some set configurations that can’t be messed with; but you will still have the power to administrate your servers as a customer of GameServers.”

Ranked servers will cost $14.95 a month for an 18 max player limit. Discounts are offered for monthly prepays. Unranked servers will cost $0.99 a month per player up to maximum of 24. Teamspeak support will have an additional fee. Discounts will be offered for a 3, 6, and 12 month prepay.

This is an interesting situation in which the “traditional” culture of PC gaming, in which players have free reign to alter games through mods and whatnot, is running against the “change nothing!” culture of console gaming. This is an interesting half-step in some direction, but I’d lay odds that it will take less than a week before some enterprising gamer figures out a work-around for running his/her own server.[/url]