Activision has issued a cease and desist to the small group of developers working on a fan-made mod for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The project was called SM2 and has been in development for about a year now. The project aimed to be a mashup of all previous Call of Duty titles including maps, modes weapons and other assets. It was also going to be released for free.
According to the official Twitter account for SM2, Activision served the team with a legal Cease and Desist order. As a result, the team has been forced to shut down all development on the project.
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Last month, the team behind SM2 announced that it would be moving away from the original Modern Warfare 2 engine and porting everything over to the original Modern Warfare H1 engine. This move was made due to technical complications they faced with some of the development.
We don’t know if this move sparked Activision’s legal proceedings or whether or not it was related to the team using the assets and content without consent.
Today, a team member received a Cease & Desist letter on behalf of Activision Publishing in relation to the sm² project. We are complying with this order and shutting down all operations permanently. Thank you all for your support over the past 2 years.
— sm² (@sm2game) May 17, 2023
Of course, this whole story, while sad, isn’t unexpected. You can’t use another company’s assets, name, content and everything else they worked on and expect them to sit by and watch you craft another multiplayer game which would in turn, be an alternate competitive product to their own.
Activision is quite protective over its IPs so this news doesn’t come as a surprise. It is just sad that the development team worked on this project for over a year before being told to stop. It would have saved a lot of time and effort if this was done back when the project was announced.
SM2 was quite far into development too with the YouTube channel detailing some of the up-and-running game modes and features. You can watch what could have been here.
