It was less than a week ago that the creators of the fan-made Call of Duty platform, sm2, revealed that they had been sent a Cease & Desist letter from publisher Activision, and would be forced to shut down the sm2 servers, and, just recently, another fan-made Call of Duty project, X Labs, revealed that they too would have to terminate all of their operations for the exact same reason.Fan reaction has been determinately one-sided. People are fuming over Activision's actions, as these curated platforms (X Labs, sm2) had become what many believed to be the only way to play the multiplayer modes of older Call of Duty games, such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (2009), Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, Ghosts, Black Ops 3, and more.Though many of these titles can still be played via Activision's official PC releases, the consensus seems to be that these versions are essentially unplayable, as the lack of tangible security makes it a hive for bad actors, meaning playing them could put you or your PC at risk.
This is what is mostly fueling the anger towards Activision right now, that these fan-made projects were the only safe way to play the online modes of these older Call of Duty titles, and that Activision shut them down without providing a reasonable alternative.
Activision has, of course, every legal right to protect its IP and go after these non-profit projects. The fan-made platforms are surely taking some attention away from the official COD offerings, but fans who were simply enjoying playing these older games, and now have no way safe way to do so, understandably feel like Activision isn't taking them into account.
There is still the Plutonium Project, which allows players to play World at War, some Black Ops games, and more, but players are sure that this will be the next project Activision goes after, given the recent developments. After all, Plutonium is doing the same thing sm2 and X Labs were doing, so there's no discernible reason as to why Activision would spare just it.