Call of Duty: Modern Warfare players on the Xbox One and PC are calling for a boycott of the game after its PS4 Survival Mode exclusivity was revealed. This certainly isn’t the first time that fans have said they’ll boycott a game from the Call of Duty franchise, but it is once again raising issues of the business practices of game developers.
During yesterdays State of Play, it was announced that the PS4 version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is going to be getting an exclusive game mode called “Survival Mode” for an entire year. This means that players on the Xbox One and PC are going to have to wait if they’d like to play the game in this particular fashion. (It isn’t yet known if Xbox One or PC will be getting any platform exclusives of their own.)
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As noted on Reddit, Infinity Ward’s Narrative Director Taylor Kurosaki has said that the PS4 exclusive Survival Mode is “1% of the game”, with the remaining 99% being released simultaneously across all platforms. Unfortunately, this hasn’t done much to quell the anger of fans on PC and Xbox One.
“This is shameful and pathetic,” began a submission by /u/javycane on /r/xboxone. “One can understand map packs for a month but a whole gamemode being locked out? Thievery paying the same for less content than the ps4 owners.”
The PC side of the equation showed an equal level of anger on the matter of PS4 exclusivity.
“I was really happy with this game,” said /u/deflaimun in a submission on /r/pcgaming. “The beta was amazing, ground war was an amazing touch for the series, but we gotta stand up for this kind of crap.”
“Companies need to stop doing that s***,” he continued. “It’s ridiculous, it’s absurd. How does one year of exclusivity benefit anyone? Even people playing on the PS4 will suffer, because they have less people to play with.”
Both threads are filled with comments of people saying that they are canceling their pre-orders or passing on buying the game entirely due to this and other practices by the developers and publisher. Whether or not this boycott will have any meaningful impact on the game’s sales remains to be seen, but what’s clear is that fans are certainly not happy with the situation — even if it’s only “1% of the game.”
