Originally Posted by
SoulsCollective
The usual reasons given are cost - that it would cost more time and therefore money to develop a split server/client hosting model, and that it would represent an ongoing cost to maintain a master server list that would track all dedicated servers that are up and serve that information to any client that goes online.
As far as CoD:MW2 goes, though, this argument is arse.
In the first place, MW2 is clearly built on the CoD4 engine. This is shown in the graphics similarities, console commands being the same (lean, FOV etc can all be re-implemented by using the CoD4 console commands), and would suggest that the netcode is also the same, meaning that as with the other things removed from the PC version (ie. lean, changing FOV), the lack of dedicated servers is probably simply due to IW disabling existing functionality. This would mean that the only cost to them would be maintaining a master server list - which really isn't that expensive, seeing as they aren't actually hosting any games.
Secondly, though, the entire argument is misleading. The true cost to IW of allowing dedicated servers is a lack of content control - in any dedicated server model, a client upon connecting to the server syncs game files, allowing dedicated servers to run mods and other content changes. Thus, a large and active modding community for CoD4 arose, playing on dedicated servers that supported mods. If you do not allow a dedicated server model, and rather force a P2P listen server system, you don't have a central hub, and you cannot play with mods or other content changes - when you connect to another player (who is the temporary host) and your game files differ from theirs, you'll be refused connection and can't play. Because you can't choose who will host your game, you can't play with any mods or suchlike.
Why does IW care about this? Noone is really sure, but the elephant in the room here is DLC - one of the best ways to make money off a game post-release is to dribble out paid-for content to users, like new guns, campaigns, and perks. If users effectively cannot mod game files, IW is guaranteed a market for all this after launch, as the only way to change the game is to pay for the DLC.
