Some of you may have already seen this, but to bring it to everyone's attention, Battlefield developer, DICE, have somewhat used the backlash against Infinity Ward's recent announcement of a peer-to-peer solution for multiplayer for the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 to not only reassert their dedication to the PC platform and its myriad users, but also as another reason it might be worth waiting for the lush Bad Company 2, due out March next year.

Speaking on the series' official blog page the developer had this to say; "since Battlefield 1942 DICE has used dedicated servers for all platforms. This formula has worked well, and still works well, for us and for the gaming community. We have stayed true to this practice and will continue this tradition into the upcoming title Battlefield Bad Company 2."

They also follow this up with a bit of shiv into IW's decision, maintaining the strength of DS over P2P with a handy FAQ in tow.

If you haven't seen the stunning Bad Company 2 multiplayer debut gameplay trailer yet, hit this link.

As this is a hot topic, Eurogamer have confirmed something we already had delivered from the Horse's mouth at E3 with Brink developer, Splash Damage, who have again gone on record to confirm they'll be supporting the DS PC multiplayer options.

This has actually worked out really well for DICE because already I'm more interested in Bad Company 2 than I was for MW2, largely on account of this.

All the more power to them!

Infinity Ward just lost another customer, this is where ditching your loyal fan base for console $$$ gets you IW.

Bring on Bad Company 2!

this is where ditching your loyal fan base for console $$$

You mean like when bad company wasnt released for pc?

Yeah, I'm glad we have Dice to support the PC platform, in fact I might go play some Battlefield 1943 right now to celebrate. Oh no, thats right, I can't because its only on console.

Don't put your faith in Dice; they are trending bad as well. We are privy to a lot of NDA'd information about what they're doing; I wish I could share it, but suffice to say they suck pretty badly.

Valve are the only ones putting their money where their mouth is.

There's a pretty entertaining open letter to IW here - http://v4v.us/forums/v_lounge/letter_to_iw_found_in_their_forum_long_read_but_entertaining

I realise I'm a bit late to the party, but the question I ask is: do they allow _users_ to run their own dedicated servers?

The FAQ only says they have 'trusted partners with datacenters worlwide that you'll be able to rent a dedicated server from...'

If this is the case, then they are truly only cosmetically different to IW.

I realise I'm a bit late to the party, but the question I ask is: do they allow _users_ to run their own dedicated servers?The FAQ only says they have 'trusted partners with datacenters worlwide that you'll be able to rent a dedicated server from...'If this is the case, then they are truly only cosmetically different to IW.

No, they do not allow users to run their own dedicated servers. Some games (like BF2/BF2142) they can, but they are "unranked", so don't contribute to their stupid global stats stuff.

But you are spot on; with things like Heroes they are largely just cosmetically different. I personally think it's almost worse than what IW doing.

Ok, are there any negative reasons why they wouldn't let people make dedicated servers?

Ok, are there any negative reasons why they wouldn't let people make dedicated servers?

The current thinking in the case of Dice and other game developers is that they want to maintain the integrity of their global stats/ranking system. I can't go into too much detail about this because of various NDAs, but if you're a regular BF2/2142 player you're probably familiar with the ridiculous lengths people go to in order to try to game the stats system/ranking system.

Controlling the software is one way that they (feel that they) can do this. Dice have done it for a while with Battlefield and Splash Damage did it with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. The idea is that if the dedicated server software is controlled, the stats system can't be gamed so easily.

This, I feel, is true to some extent. People are douchebags and will spend hours trying to hack the traffic between the dedicated server and the stats server in order to 'fake' the information and give themselves forfty million kills and no deaths.

I personally feel that clever software design, solid crypto, regular software updates (which are done ANYWAY) and some remotely decent analytics running on the stats database would be a better solution. I don't have a lot of evidence for this, of course, because noone has tried it yet - but I feel that it is more important for GAMERS to have a wider variety of game servers than it is to have a ruthlessly accurate world ranking system.