Over the past few weeks Infinity Ward has come under fire for its decision to cut dedicated servers from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on PC. Today, news of console-side restrictions has emerged as a poster on the NeoGAF forums learned that Infinity Ward will disable Party Chat for Xbox Live users, and will reset the leaderboards when the game ships next week. NeoGAF user Accident managed to get an early copy of MW2, but when he tried to join a game in Party Chat, he was given the message to switch to in-game chat or leave the game.

While a screenshot from an advance copy of MW2 revealed the Party Chat-disabling, Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling divulged the leaderboard info on his Twitter. "It definitely looks like a full leaderboard / level reset is in order just before the release date to ensure no unfair advantages," Bowling explains.




Tyler says: Wasting time is my #1 pet peeve, which is why I hate taking the time to mute loud-mouth punks in online games. My favorite workaround for this annoyance? Xbox Live Party Chat. My least-favorite move this year? Disabling Party Chat in MW2. When did Infinity Ward become such power freaks? It wants PC gamers to have a console experience, but even console gamers aren't allowed to play MW2 the way they want to.

Resetting the leaderboards, on the other hand, is a no-brainer to me. Anyone that moans about this gets no sympathy from me simply because, duh, they got to play MW2 early! Isn't that enough?