Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered (the 2016 redo of Call of Duty 4) surprised everyone by climbing to the top of the Steam charts earlier this week. The fact that it was on sale certainly helped, but what really drove the sales was the imminent release of the H2M Mod, a massive fan-made project aimed at recreating classic Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer in the newer remake. The whole thing was scuttled at the last moment: Activision's attorneys came knocking on the door one day before the mod went live.
The team announced on Twitter that "Today our team members received a Cease & Desist Order on behalf of Activision Publishing relating to the H2M Mod project." "We are complying to this order and closing down all operations immediately."
The makers of H2M have not communicated since the site h2m.dev was taken offline.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of Call of Duty players are not happy about this outcome. One thing is that there's real demand for Modern Warfare 2: (2009) multiplayer from the fans. As Modern Warguy Morgan Park stated in his article about the H2M Mod earlier this week: "Modern Warfare 2 remains peak CoD for teens of the late 2000s." Activision's official remastered Modern Warfare 2 will not feature multiplayer. It is a campaign-only game.
Not only did H2M feature remasters of the Modern Warfare 2 maps for multiplayer, but it also included campaign levels reworked to be used in multiplayer combat and every Call of Duty 4 Map--54 total maps. This is a huge deal and makes C&D a major loss.
Activision's decision to wait until the very last minute before releasing the C&D for the project is also causing a lot of ruckus. And, more importantly, until the Steam sale ended. Many people bought Modern Warfare Remastered at half-price to play the H2M Mod. Some fans believe that Activision deliberately let things slide in order to take advantage of this big sales bump. Many H2M fans on Twitter, including some with large followings, have urged everyone to refund the game as soon as possible.
Robert Bowling, a former Call of Duty creative strategy, responded to the mod shut down on Twitter by saying that "a lot of the original Infinity Ward was made up of devs and modders." "The original Call of Duty PC game released mod tools and servers files to empower community creativity to expand on the vision. Build systems that will help your UGC Community, not strangle it.
Others were more succinct in their assessment.
It's not a completely surprising outcome, as sad as it may be. It's not the first time Activision has issued a cease-and desist order to a Call of Duty Mod project. In 2023, Activision shut down both the SM2 Call of Duty Client mod project, which had been in development for two years, as well as the older IW4X Call of Duty Mod made by X Labs.
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