GameGuide » Blog Archive » Modern Warfare 2 PC Multiplayer Capped At 9 vs 9

Coming in the wake of the Great Dedicated Server Controversy of Ought-Nine, Infinity Ward has announced another bit of Modern Warfare 2 news that might rile devoted PC gamers. Whereas multiplayer sessions in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare allowed up to 32 players on the PC, Modern Warfare 2’s player cap will be reduced to 18, with 9-vs-9 matches just like the console versions. 

Before you grab your pitchforks, Infinity Ward does have a reason for the decision: “The max number of players on all platforms are 1v1 through 9v9. This is the number of players we focused on when we were balancing map size, perks, classes, challenges, etc.,” explained developer Mackey McCandlish in a Best Buy live chat session (via Kotaku).

So in other words, rather than potentially upset the balance by artificially inflating the cap just because they can (and they probably could have), they chose instead to preserve the balance they were going for in designing every other portion of the multiplayer experience. Whether that explanation will be enough for PC gamers who thought they were getting bigger multiplayer sessions than their console friends, though, will remain to be seen. [1up]