Activision has officially taken down a Call of Duty fan-made game called SM2 after a cease-and-desist letter was sent to one of the developers.
For those unfamiliar, SM2 is a fan-made love letter to the entire Call of Duty franchise, albeit a free-to-play one after purchasing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) on Steam and based on the Modern Warfare 2 engine. The fan creation took weapons and maps from the CoD franchise and put them in a solid place to bring in CoD PvP representatives.
The developers took to Twitter today to announce that all development on SM2 would discontinue immediately following one of the developers receiving a cease and desist from Activision. This comes less than a month after the developers on SM2 switched their development engine from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II to the more recent Modern Warfare Remastered (2016). The Tweet can be seen below.
Not even 10 hours have passed since the announcement, and the official SM2 website has already gone cold and redirects fans attempting to access the site to the shutdown Tweet above. This, of course, has incited massive fan backlash, compounding frustration on the already disappointed fan base of Activision Blizzard following the massive Overwatch 2 PvE cancellation. It’s worth noting the previous SM2 build, prior to the April 22nd decision to switch development engines to MW Remastered, required users to purchase MW2 (2009) on Steam to play the fan-made title.
Fans have sounded off on the SM2 Twitter post, with disappointment arriving in waves. User @Recons said, “This has made me incredibly sad. When Sm2 got announced, I was so excited for the actual game that makes CoD feel like ACTUAL CoD again. They lost their spirit of making a game that was fun, and Sm2 was something that made it feel like I was 14 again,” regarding the nostalgia SM2 brought to Call of Duty fans.
Other fans referred to the MW: Remastered engine switch as ‘piracy’ and expected the move from Activision. A fan @TacktiCal_ on Reddit suggested, “There’s no way they would be able to do this without basically including a pirated copy of Modern Warfare in the installation package. Wouldn’t be surprised if this announcement is what finally prompted Activision to take action. I’m sure they’ve had their eye on this project for a while” regarding the takedown of SM2.
Although the fan-made Call of Duty SM2 has been in development for two years and has been effectively wiped off the internet, fans can see the journey the developers took in development by visiting their Twitter page and viewing their past updates as they’ve happened.
