First spotted by Insider Gaming, Watchful Wolf, a member of the hotly anticipated H2M mod project to remaster the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer by way of the Modern Warfare 1 remaster, has released a video elaborating on Activision’s cease and desist order. According to Watchful Wolf, the mega publisher didn’t want the potential competition with Black Ops 6 on the way.
The move gained a lot of ire by coming just before H2M’s release—and conveniently after the end of a Modern Warfare Remastered sale that was seriously juiced by hype for the mod. According to Watchful Wolf, things were even more stressful and last minute than they appeared: “We were within a few hours before releasing it,” the modder said. “I decided to check my email and that’s when I saw the cease and desist. Immediately, we just dropped everything, turned off all our servers, website, and everything we could.”
Aggressive copyright enforcement is nothing new in the industry, but according to Watchful Wolf, there was a particularly galling tidbit in the C&D explaining why Activision made the move: The multi-billion dollar mega corporation was afraid of the competition.
“Because of the popularity H2M was gaining and how close it is to Black Ops 6 releasing,” H2M said, “They did not want H2M interfering with possible sales of Black Ops 6.
“For people who suggest ‘you should have just made it on [Black Ops 3] or something like that because they allow mod support,’ Well, I don’t think any project—no matter where it was—if it garnered such popularity so close to a new game releasing, they would have shut it down anyways I think.”
While Watchful Wolf did not share the exact wording of the cease and desist email, it’s a believable justification: Black Ops 6 is the first CoD coming after the finalization of the Microsoft acquisition and the first one releasing on Game Pass. While even a poor-selling Call of Duty would set up a mid-size or indie developer for life, Xbox and Game Pass are at a bit of a make or break point following Microsoft’s years-long studio spending spree and subsequent studio closing spree. Team Green needs a real dinger with this one.
But it’s also absurd on the face of it: if a group of modders can credibly threaten the sales of one of the biggest media property in history, or otherwise this massive tangle of companies’ continued health is that reliant on the runaway success of a single videogame, that requires some serious soul-searching on the part of the massive corporation with functionally infinite resources.
And until its cancellation, H2M was a handy example of modders demonstrably helping the bottom line of the company whose game they were working on: It’s hard to think of another reason besides hype for H2M that boosted the recent Steam sale of Modern Warfare Remastered. The fact that Activision reaped that benefit before shuttering the mod makes this look even worse.
Varied approaches to videogame modding exist all over the industry, but it’s interesting to see both extremes now coexisting under the same parent company: Activision is over here, eliminating with extreme prejudice, while fellow Microsoft subsidiary Bethesda tolerates game-sized total conversions like Skyblivion or Fallout: London that leverage its precious intellectual property.
Watchful Wolf is stepping back from Call of Duty modding, but he says he still loves the shooter series: “It’s not even the developers’ fault, just the Activision lawyers seemingly.” While he won’t be working on CoD mods anymore, there is a silver lining to everything that’s happened: Watchful Wolf and the H2M team are considering development of their own videogame.
“It’s a bit fuzzy on the details and our team is a bit scattered at the moment,” Watchful Wolf said, “But it may very well be a joint union of the H2M and the SM2 [another CoD mod killed by Activision] team to work on our own.”