Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - NEWS

Call of Duty proves UK’s best ever seller

Video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 1.23m copies in the first 24 hours it was on sale, making it the best-selling ever in Britain.

The £47m worth of sales were twice that of Grand Theft Auto IV, which sold 631,000 copies the first day it was available last year.

Meanwhile, Microsoft yesterday confirmed that it had blocked some of its 20 million Xbox Live users, who installed hardware to play pirated games, from using its online gaming service.

Labour MPs clash over Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game

Two Labour MPs locked horns today over the imminent release of a widely anticipated violent video game. Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs select committee, said Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 contained such "scenes of brutality" that its makers had placed warnings within the game itself. He urged the government to ensure such games were not played by children – but Tom Watson, the former digital engagement minister, said it would be better for MPs to support the UK's video gaming industry.

The new Call of Duty game – which reportedly allows players to plot terror attacks against civilians – is expected to break sales records when it goes on sale at midnight tonight.

Vaz told the Daily Mail he was "absolutely shocked" by the level of violence in the game. During Commons question time, he said toMPs: "It contains such scenes of brutality that even the manufacturers have put in warnings within the game telling people how they can skip particular scenes." He asked what steps ministers were taking to ensure that violent games did not fall into the hands of children and young people. "It's not about censorship, it's about protecting our children," he added. Siôn Simon, the junior culture minister, said the clearest recommendation of the Byron review – which last year looked into the risks faced by children from inappropriate video games – was that content suitable for adults should be labelled and sold as such.

"The game you refer to is a certificate 18 game," he said. "It should not be sold to children and the government's job is to make sure that adults ... can get what adults should be able to and children are not in danger of being subjected to adult content." Watson said he had seen the game, and it "wasn't pleasant, though no worse than many films and books". He told MPs: "It carries a content warning, it is an 18 plus game. It would be better for members of this house to support the many thousands of games designers and coders and the many millions of games users, rather than collaborating with the Daily Mail to create moral panic over the use of video games." Simon said it was important to support Britain's "very large and important" video games industry and said the UK had a "national competitive advantage" in the field.

Watson today set up a Facebook group called Gamers' Voice with the aim of discussing how game-players could "find their voice in newspapers and government". He wrote on the group's web page: "Are you sick of UK newspapers and (my fellow) politicians beating up on gaming? So am I. The truth is, UK gamers need their own pressure group. I want to help you start one up."

The group so far has more than 900 members. (including myself)

GameStop Defends Breaking Street Date For Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Gaming industry insiders weren't the only ones picking up early copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" over the weekend. Reports out of the New York City area and elsewhere indicated that scattered retailers decided to ignore the game's official November 10th street and start selling it early. Among them were one of the biggest names in video games sales, GameStop, and although Activision claims not to have signed off on the decision, an official GameStop statement owns up to the move.

"This past weekend, GameStop made the decision to break street date and sell reserved copies of 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2' in select markets where other retailers had broken street date," GameStop's vice president for corporate communications Chris Olivera told Kotaku. "Our decision followed many conversations with Activision and was an effort to protect our customer base."

Olivera didn't directly assert that Activision approved of GameStop's decision, his choice of words definitely implies that Activision was made of aware of his company's choice. It's unclear if Activision would take any recourse against retailers in violation of the "MW2" street date, but Infinity Ward has drawn a hard line on the subject.

"ANY store selling #MW2 early is in violation of street date," Infinity Ward's community manager Robert Bowling said on Twitter Sunday. "There are no 'special permissions.' That said, we won't punish players for it."

Activision echoed that sentiment in their own statement, stating "Activision has not given any retailer permission to sell 'Modern Warfare 2' prior to the Nov. 10 street date."

The good news is that if your an average gamer on the street, you don't need to feel like a criminal if you bought a legitimate retail copy of the game -- even if you do have to wait another day to activate it for PC. Whether or not there is any fallout between Activision and retailers, however, will be an entirely separate question.