COD players dust off Xbox 360s to celebrate “sudden” Modern Warfare 2 revival

Activision fixed matchmaking for Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox 360, and fans think it’s because of the pending Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Activision shocked and disappointed the COD community in May by shutting down two passion projects. First, Sm2, a free-to-play mod using the MW 2019 engine, saw its doors close before ever seeing the light of day after two years of development.

And then five days later, a cease and desist letter forced X Labs to shut down, which featured modded versions of previous COD titles like Black Ops 3. Players were left with nowhere to turn if they wanted to play old COD titles.

For example, Black Ops Cold War had an exploit allowing players to gain access to the IP addresses of others in the lobby. Fortunately, Activision launched an investigation, and the devs appear to have also begun revisiting other classic titles.

Modern Warfare 2 (2009) suddenly brought back to life

On July 12, CharlieIntel reported: “It appears Activision has fixed matchmaking on older Call of Duty games on Xbox 360.”

Zekco Trickshots successfully loaded into a Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer match. Previously, servers only worked for private matchmaking.

Coincidently just one day prior, the Federal Court sided with Microsoft over the Federal Trade Commission. This helped potentially clear a path for Microsoft to complete its nearly $70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard before the looming July 18 expiration date.

Players speculated that Microsoft was behind MW2’s unexpected reemergence; CharlieIntel responded to those claims.

“Activision has not commented on why this was suddenly fixed. Microsoft does not own Activision yet, so they couldn’t have directed this fix yet. But it could be related to the fact that the company that will soon own them would like their old games to be playable.”

CharlieIntel shut down any possibility of Microsoft pulling the strings behind Modern Warfare 2’s fix but didn’t rule out a potential correlation.

For more on Microsoft’s potential buyout of Activision Blizzard, check out our full coverage.