Call of Duty: Black Ops dedicated servers are go?

 

When dedicated servers were announced for the upcoming COD: Black Ops, many PC gamers the world over rejoiced. Modern Warfare 2’s lack of this feature created a sore point and so Activision, seeming to want to learn from their mistakes, has brought the feature back for Black Ops. But there’s some fine print that begs for your attention.

If you want to utilise dedicated servers then you only have one option: sign up with GameServers.com and start paying rent.

Activision and Treyarch have signed an exclusivity deal with the dedicated server provider, which is now offering various pricing options depending on the amount of people you want on your server. A ranked server will cost $14.95 per month for a maximum of 18 players. An unranked server will cost $0.99 per month per player for a maximum of 24 players. Additional features like Teamspeak will cost a little extra.

CEO of GameServers, David Aninowsky, has said that people renting dedicated servers will have the ability to customise their setups and you’ll be able to ban and kick people until your heart’s content, but there will be “some set configurations that can’t be messed with”. Treyarch has been quick to point out that this exclusivity deal does not mean that people will have to pay for regular, online Black Ops multiplayer.

Gamerservers.com are taking pre-orders right now, but the news gets a little more grim for PC gamers in South Africa: judging by the “worldwide network” that the service provider boasts about, there is no support for Africa, South America, or Asia. Why are we not surprised?

You can view the dedicated server options here. Call of Duty: Black Ops arrives across platforms on 09 November 2010.

Last Updated: September 13, 2010