Activision Is Sending Cease and Desist Orders to Call of Duty Modders, List Includes X Labs

Activision continues to take action against Call of Duty modding community. The game publisher recently joined several others in the industry to stop modders from servicing older gamers. According to the latest information, Activision sent a Cease-and-Desist letter to a leading Modder in the Call of Duty community, X Labs. The developers took to Twitter to share the news on May 22, 2023.

This latest development comes just a week after the company took a similar action against sm2 (sm²). It was a mod(ified) version of Call of Duty created by a small team of developers. The initial version of the mod was based on Modern Warfare 2 (2009) and it later shifted to Modern Warfare Remastered engine. Let’s check the details shared by X Labs and how it impacts the Call of Duty gaming community at large.

X Labs to stop developing Call of Duty mods

X Labs was a modding group that created open-source mods for Call of Duty games. It brought fan-loved features from modern CoD titles to older games. The group also developed mods that let players enjoy the old games from the franchise that are no longer in service.

However, X Labs shared the news of receiving a Cease-and-Desist letter from Activision Publishing, via a Tweet from their official Twitter account on May 22, 2023. The news was also shared by their leading developer, Maurice Heumann.

X Labs also announced that it will comply with the order and shut down all operations permanently, including those for Black Ops III. It also thanked its fans for all their support.

The gaming community has not received the news well as seen in the responses to the X Labs announcement tweet. Some fans are even trolling Activision on this Reddit thread titled “The next game probably [COD]”. However, moderators of the Call of Duty channel have been quick to act, having already taken the posts down.

However, it is unclear what prompted Activision to send the legal notice to the modders after all these years. Speculations by some media outlets suggest that Microsoft acquisition deal might have something to do with it.