Activision Shoots Down Fan-Made Call Of Duty Server Project

Activision has issued a cease and desist letter to X Labs, a popular Call of Duty fan project, shutting down all its ongoing operations. Another fan-made project, sm2, received a similar treatment less than a week ago, enraging fans and amassing criticism from other notable figures. X Labs has functioned for a while, making mods and servers for older Call of Duty titles to eliminate the safety risks they harbor.

Today, we have received a Cease & Desist letter on behalf of Activision Publishing in relation to the X Labs project. We are complying with this order and shutting down all operations permanently. Thank you all for your support over the years.

— X Labs (@XLabsProject) May 22, 2023

Not even a week after sm2 received a cease and desist letter from Activision, we have witnessed yet another fan-made project getting shut down by the giant company. Though the reasons are still unverified, this is likely because X Labs, in one of its how-to guides, has linked to a torrent of the original game. It still doesn’t explain why sm2 received the treatment before, but such scenarios can cause legal troubles.

Nevertheless, fans are unhappy with Activision’s actions, as Mutahar from SomeOrdinaryGamers stated, “I’m devastated. I actually play this about every day at this point. It’s the only fun cod and f***ing Activision ruins it. F*** you.” Fans’ frustrations can also be seen in the replies to X Labs’ original tweet, with even ModernWarzone’s Twitter account replying, “So sorry to hear about this.”

The biggest issue with Activision shutting down mods like XLabs is that there is no safe alternative to play older Call of Duty games online anymore.

If you play old COD games on console you are putting yourself at serious risk because your personal information isn’t safe.

— ModernWarzone (@ModernWarzone) May 22, 2023

Unless Activision solves the issue concerning safety risks on older Call of Duty titles (which it likely won’t ), this might be one of the worst things Activision would have ever done, at least in the consumer’s eyes. Even though Activision is completely within its rights to do such actions against fan-made projects, the company has lost many fans this way.

X Labs has made considerable contributions to the community, being the modding collective behind IW4X, IW6X, and the former under-development project for Black Ops III. The self-proclaimed modding laboratory made these open-source mod projects for Modern Warfare 2 (2009), Call of Duty: Black Ops III, and Ghosts, and it allowed players to run their dedicated servers with custom scripts, maps, modes, guns, etc.

Considering how both shutdowns have occurred within a week, we might see Activision becoming stricter with such projects, meaning this might be the beginning of something unpleasant for Call of Duty fans.