Direct2Drive, Impulse won't sell Modern Warfare 2

Though not because they are boycotting MW2 directly, but rather the whole Steamworks deal

Posted on Nov 5, 2009 - 11:05pm EST

Major online retailer Direct2Drive have announced today that one of the year's biggest games - Modern Warfare 2 - won't be made available on their PC digital delivery service. Why? Because of rival platform Steam.

Activision's shooter includes mandatory installation of Valve's Steamworks, which the game uses for stuff like installation, DRM and save-game management. Something Direct2Drive (which is owned by website IGN) are having none of, saying "We don't believe games should force the user to install a Trojan Horse". That "Trojan Horse" being the inclusion of Steam's commercial marketplace.

D2D also told Kotaku that, having evaluated some Steamworks titles earlier in the year (such as Empire: Total War and Dawn of War II) and finding the forced inclusion of Steam's storefront not to their liking, told publishers that they'd stop selling games bundled in such a manner until Valve "decoupled its retail marketplace" from Steam's other services.

To be clear, D2D's beef is not with Activision, it's with Steam, and to prove there's no bad blood between the retailer and mega-publisher, $5 coupons will soon be offered on select Activision titles to make up for it.

It also seems that Impulse have come out today and also confirmed they won't be stocking the game either, for the same reasons.

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Nov 6, 2009 11:40:49 (Nov 6, 2009 11:40)

kamikaziechameleon

if I'm not mistaken IGN is tied to the same network that previously owned gamespy arcade, something not at all different from steam except it didn't feature(to my limited knowledge) a store for full fledged game but rather a limited functionality matchmakind drm service that required a monthly fee for full services, hows that for a trojan hourse.

Shut up D2D

Now imipulse is a little more legit since they aren't being total(emphasis on total) hypocrites.

the store front is great and consumers love it, sorry that you don't offer such a well bundeled sweat of goods to your consumers D2D steams community tools are mainly funded by the store front. impulse is funny to me simply because it was bundeled in exactly the same manner with demigod.

I love listening to hypocrites(implied sarcasm).

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