Valve Throws Steamworks Support Behind Modern Warfare 3

Post by Steve Farrelly @ 09:51am 30/08/11 | 30 Comments

With all the hubbub surrounding EA and Valve over Origin and Steam (specifically for Battlefield 3), it's a pretty smart move on Activision's part to employ the Valve lads to enable Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 with full Steamworks support on the PC platform.

Valve has reminded us the game is now available for pre-purchase on Steam and will be playable from Day One on November 8 (worldwide, so we're among the first) with full offline support, auto-updating, Achievements and will also have dedicated servers out-of-the-box.

Say what you will in this modern combat shooter fight, but it looks like Modern Warfare 3 is at least trying to tick all the right boxes.

battlefield 3 modern warfare 3 call of duty dedicated servers steam valve

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Latest Comments

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Timmeh
Posted 10:14am 30/8/11

BF3 Without steam.
It all makes sense now!!!!

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Eorl
Posted 10:33am 30/8/11

Heh. Funny how we all thought MW3 would bomb, and now it's doing things somewhat right...and yet BF3, which will be a damn good game, has no dedicated servers, no mod support, no in-game browser and no Steam support. Interesting EA, veryyyy interesting...

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DeadlyDav0
Posted 10:50am 30/8/11

Does anybody else think the modding community has died quite significantly? I remember countless quality mods for UT and Q3 and Warcraft 3 but as of lately, there seems to be hardly any. The only significant one i remember was that Pro version for COD4.

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Steve Farrelly
Posted 10:56am 30/8/11

I think it depends on the game and the level of support from the devs DeadlyDav0. Bethesda games, for example, always have great mods and a really healthy mod community

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Trauma
Posted 11:20am 30/8/11

What the main advantage of steam works? And does it apply to retail copies activated on steam?

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RockitMan
Posted 11:21am 30/8/11

BF3, which will be a damn good game, has no dedicated servers

BF3 has dedicated servers.

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Steve Farrelly
Posted 11:22am 30/8/11

Trauma, yep it applies to retail copies

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Enska
Posted 11:30am 30/8/11

Haha, quick where's all the CoD haters..

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Eorl
Posted 12:36pm 30/8/11

Actually it doesn't Rockit. It has RSP's, which really isn't "dedicated" servers like what we've had for the past 10-15 years of gaming.

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FraktuRe
Posted 12:43pm 30/8/11

You mean like how cod:blops and mw3 have the same thing eorl?

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Dan
Posted 12:44pm 30/8/11

Actually it doesn't Rockit. It has RSP's, which really isn't "dedicated" servers like what we've had for the past 10-15 years of gaming.

I know what you're getting at and my vote is definitely on the same side of the fence as you, but even though they're only hosted by specific GSPs it's still accurate to call them dedicated servers.

It would be nice if there was some easy name to refer to the gamer-favoured solution, but the best I can think of is something along the lines of "publicly hosted dedicated servers".

Anyway, Crysis 2 launched with the GSP only server model and a few months later they released the public server software, so let's hope that MW3's influences forces the same out of BF3.

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Dan
Posted 12:45pm 30/8/11

You mean like how cod:blops and mw3 have the same thing eorl?

Black Ops did (in fact it was limited to only one single provider which is far worse than BF3's plans), but WM3 is reportedly supposed to permit players to host their own servers.

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Eorl
Posted 12:46pm 30/8/11

Yeah, that's why I put "dedicated" in parenthesis. It's just annoying that DICE's excuse is..well, no excuse. They just don't seem to care, yet at least Activision is going "hey, we screwed up, let's give it back to them and more power to them!". And Frak, it was only Blops that had RSP's. MW2 had IWnet which was user hosted servers.

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Enska
Posted 12:53pm 30/8/11

Now if we manage to get more than a 24/7 Nuketown server we'll be set for good times. :D

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boba
Posted 01:03pm 30/8/11

but WM3 is reportedly supposed to permit players to host their own servers.

great now we'll have s*** laggy server run by kids on their home connections, it's almost better to have a GSP model to maintain quality of servers

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Dan
Posted 01:08pm 30/8/11

great now we'll have s*** laggy server run by kids on their home connections, it's almost better to have a GSP model to maintain quality of servers

Presuming you're not just trolling. Server is laggy = just join another one, and favorite the ones you know are good.

Much better to have that choice than the MW2 method (and most console versions) of every server being laggy ones running on kids home connections and the bonus fun of host migration when said kid disconnects.

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Trauma
Posted 01:26pm 30/8/11

Now if we manage to get more than a 24/7 Nuketown server we'll be set for good times. :D

I f*****g hate nuketown!

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Khel
Posted 01:27pm 30/8/11

Yeah, that's why I put "dedicated" in parenthesis. It's just annoying that DICE's excuse is..well, no excuse. They just don't seem to care

I don't really care either, as an end user that is. Maybe if I was coming at it from a different angle I'd care more, but all I care about is having a choice of fast, well run dedicated servers to play on, I don't really care who runs them. So the RSP thing that BF3 is doing works fine for me (as long as theres enough servers out there).

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Eorl
Posted 02:23pm 30/8/11

Sometimes that is the problem though, because RSP's rely on people buying servers, and only have a few of their own servers up and running (mind you CSS had a lot in that regards, but I'm talking more BC2). With dedicated servers, it allows the end user to have a much better experience, and a wider pool of choice. The person hosting also has the ability to tweak and omit whatever they want at their own will.

And as Dan pointed out, if a user run server is laggy, go to the next one. Usually you will find those laggy servers will die out in a few days with no user usage. But to be honest, most internet connections in this generation of age are capable of hosting a 10-20 server slot at ease.

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Dan
Posted 02:25pm 30/8/11

I don't really care either, as an end user that is. Maybe if I was coming at it from a different angle I'd care more, but all I care about is having a choice of fast, well run dedicated servers to play on, I don't really care who runs them. So the RSP thing that BF3 is doing works fine for me (as long as theres enough servers out there).

Your view is pretty much what they're banking on, and it's definitely the majority.

There are several reasons why I'm not a supporter of it though:

1\ No LAN only servers -- if you were to run a public event, you'd need anyone playing the game to be playing on Internet servers.

2\ It basically means no multliplayer mod support. Because even if they did release mod tools, you can't run servers for the mods. I'm not necessarily talking total conversions here either, even just simple stuff like tournament pro-mods etc.

3\ If you want to run a private server for your clan or whatever, your only option is to rent one from an RSP and they generally don't have what I would consider worthwhile prices.

A majority of casual players probably aren't going to care about these things, but I feel they are still worth giving a s*** about.

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Eorl
Posted 02:41pm 30/8/11

Especially with these types of games comes lots of clans etc. And the whole notion that 4 years down the track, you can still boot up MW3 and play it knowing there will be servers. Just look at COD4. Hell, CSS even.

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Everlong
Posted 08:03pm 30/8/11

Yeh I like having different options like infantry only servers or massive ticket servers for example, which may not appear on RSP servers.

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oddjob
Posted 09:27pm 30/8/11

STOP FORCING US TO USE 3RD party APPLICATIONS!!

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DeadlyDav0
Posted 09:47pm 30/8/11

I think it depends on the game and the level of support from the devs DeadlyDav0. Bethesda games, for example, always have great mods and a really healthy mod community

Ah yeah. Ive heard of all the Oblivion and Fallout 3 mods but never tried them.

STOP FORCING US TO USE 3RD party APPLICATIONS!!

I like the steam/EA activation. Means you can throw away your retail disc once activated thru steam or you can buy keys online mega cheap and lock to your account. Its retail games that dont use EA/steam accounts that i hate.

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maRtz
Posted 10:49am 31/8/11

Heh. Funny how we all thought MW3 would bomb, and now it's doing things somewhat right...and yet BF3, which will be a damn good game, has no dedicated servers, no mod support, no in-game browser and no Steam support. Interesting EA, veryyyy interesting...

doesn't change the fact that MW3 is gonna suck hard compared to BF3..

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boba
Posted 10:56am 31/8/11

Yeh I like having different options like infantry only servers or massive ticket servers for example, which may not appear on RSP servers.

false

if you've played bc2 you would know this is possible on rsp servers

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Eorl
Posted 11:51am 31/8/11

It is possible Boba, but with proper dedicated servers, it gives people even more freedom. And Martz, I'm sure both games are going to be brilliant, and I'm definitely going to play both. But we now know which one will survive the longest.

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step
Posted 12:13pm 31/8/11

It is possible Boba, but with proper dedicated servers, it gives people even more freedom.

Of course it is possible, it already is happening.
There are RSP's out there that allow you to modify the server settings as you see fit.

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maRtz
Posted 12:13pm 31/8/11

I actually plan on buying both MW3 and BF3 anyway, so don't really care tbh. just trollin' haha.

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Eorl
Posted 12:14pm 31/8/11

Of course it is possible, it already is happening.
There are RSP's out there that allow you to modify the server settings as you see fit.

Most of the time with RSP's or at least the game developers, they don't let you change ranked servers, but un-ranked servers can do what they please.

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