The Call of Duty community is up in arms after Activision revealed that Modern Warfare’s Special Ops Survival Mode would be exclusive to PlayStation 4 users. An Infinity Ward developer responded to the criticisms, though, to share his point of view.
Infinity Ward studio art director Joel “ArtPeasant” Emslie addressed the community in a Reddit post today, explaining that developers visit the Modern Warfare subreddit to read feedback. When devs encounter toxic comments, however, it can hurt more than players think.
“This sub will be a way for us to keep getting an outside hands on perspective from everyone that plays the game,” Emslie said. “Everyone benefits from this. Player experiences get better and better and we get to keep making games… We all have a pretty thick skin here but yeah it can kind of get to you.”
The drama began after the community found out that the exclusive game mode wouldn’t be available to Xbox and PC players until October 2020, despite paying the same price as PlayStation 4 users. Many frustrated fans even began to cancel pre-orders because they were upset that they’d be purchasing an unfinished game.
Emslie also suggested that fans shouldn’t listen to every rumor they find on the subreddit and asked the community to only focus on the confirmed information.
“My ask of all of you is to focus on information that is actually fact and not get thrown off by ill informed people that want to make a name for themselves by spreading half baked inflammatory rumors,” the developer said. “Lets work real problems together and not fairy tales of boogeymen.”
Emslie’s comment is likely referring to the unconfirmed rumor that Infinity Ward will include a paywall for players who want to get new weapons through microtransactions.
Modern Warfare’s release is scheduled for Oct. 25 and it’ll be available on all platforms.
