14 DAY TRIAL // The executives at publisher Activision and the developers at Beachhead Studios have announced that the launch of the PC version of the Call of Duty Elite service will be delayed, meaning that players will not get it along the physical copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 next week.
Those who plan to play the new first person shooter on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 from Sony will not be hit by any delay.
Speaking in a community Question and Answer session that was posted on the blog of Dan Amirch, who handles community affairs at Beachhead Studio, stated, “We’re as committed as ever to the PC, but the need to ensure a safe PC environment is greater than ever. It’s really extensive.”
He added, “The issue here is that the PC is an insecure platform. Without a central, trusted resource for stats, a lot of our competition features become unfair. We can’t give away prizes when people can easily cheat their stats. Leaderboards are less fun when a lot of the users are there unfairly.”
Delays have long been used by some publishers on the PC in order to make sure that the impact of piracy is limited and to push players to get the more secure versions of games that arrive on home consoles.
It's not clear how the developers at Beachhead Studios are aiming to secure the PC experience of Modern Warfare 3 in order to make sure that the stats of players are not tweaked by those who want to cheat, but the solution might be more restrictions on how the game is run.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will be launched on November 8 on the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the PC.
Elite will allow those willing to pay to get access to exclusive content and to all the DLC released for the game.