Activision has announced that the leaderboards and combat records for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023) are being “permanently disabled” ahead of Modern Warfare 4’s release in October.
Activision said it’s doing this “as we optimize backend services” in the lead-up to MW4’s launch. The announcement upset and bewildered fans.
Some are wondering how things like leaderboards and combat records for older games are related to providing services for new games. Other people replied to Activision’s post with the “no correlation” SpongeBob Squarepants meme. Still others questioned why they would buy into a new game, in this case MW4, if one day their hard-earned statistics would vanish out of the blue.
People on Reddit said they were not surprised by this decision, as they reported that the in-game leaderboards and combat records for those games have been broken for years anyway.
Activision has not provided a detailed explanation as to why this is happening apart from the line about optimizing backend services ahead of MW4’s release. GameSpot has contacted Activision in an attempt to get more information.t
Infinity Ward was involved in all three games, having led development on 2022’s MW2 and having assisted Sledgehammer Games with 2023’s MW3. For this year’s Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward is the lead developer, but it’s also getting help from Activision’s network of studios, which is common for Call of Duty releases.
MW4 launches on October 23, which is about a month before GTA 6 launches on November 19.