Fans Upset About Modern Warfare Remastered's New Map Pack
Later this month, Activision will release the Variety Map Pack, a collection of four multiplayer maps for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Remastered. Like Modern Warfare Remastered itself, the Variety Map Pack's offerings—Broadcast, Chinatown, Creek, and the warehouse battleground Killhouse—are current-generation remakes of classic Call of Duty 4 levels that originally appeared all the way back in 2008.
That's fine, but what isn't sitting well with fans is the Variety Map Pack's price. In order to get these levels—which, again, are almost 10 years old—you'll need to pay Activision $15, $5 more than the original Variety Map Pack cost on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Needless to say, people aren't happy about the price hike, especially given that many of them paid for the same content back when it hit the old-school version of Call of Duty 4. Modern Warfare Remastered's players are also complaining about paying for extra content at all, given that Modern Warfare Remastered is a remake, which rarely comes with paid DLC. Activision also gave out Modern Warfare Remastered's first map pack, which contained six levels, for free, which probably set people's expectations a little too high.
To ease the pain, Activision is also including 10 Rare Supply Drops (a $20 value) in the package. That hasn't assuaged more irate fans, who are bombarding the remastered Variety Map Pack's announce trailer with downvotes and negative comments.
On the other hand, making maps—even if they're based on existing ones—takes real-life work, and Activision needs to fund those efforts somehow. Premium downloadable content is always a gamble, but it's also much more accepted than it was during the horse armor days, and fan outrage probably isn't going to change Activision's mind until it hurts the company's bottom line. The best way to show your displeasure with the Variety Map Pack? Simply don't buy it.