Official Infinity Ward Response

Community manager Robert Bowling has updated his Twitter feed, linking to the "official" Infinity Ward response at GameInformer’s new site. All in all, PC gamers are still going to be extremely disappointed with the company over this new strategy and it will be seen as a huge blow to the PC gaming community. The higher price tag is also perplexing and is currently interpreted as paying more for less.

Here’s a snippet from the article:

"We’re just prioritizing the player experience above the modders and the tuners," says West. He points toward the mounting feedback IW has received from PC fans of Modern Warfare who couldn’t find a decent server to play on between all of the cheaters, the insular communities, and huge skill level disparities that the original game’s community fractured into. "We thought maybe it would be cool if the fans could play the game," he laughs.
 
IW says that gameplay concerns for the majority of MW2 players are the overriding reasons for the decision. Zampella downplays the obvious piracy prevention angle (IW has cited numbers of people online playing illegal copies of Modern Warfare up to 60 percent). "The Steam stuff helps with the piracy. I don’t know that the matchmaking stuff does," he notes. West takes a shot at the motives behind some of the outrage, noting that there’s money to made by selling dedicates servers and adspace on them: "It’s a little dubious. Some of the people complaining are complaining with their pocketbook."
 
Again and again during our conversation, West and Zampella hammer the point that hardcore PC players lose very little to this change relative to the returns that casual to moderate fans will see.