It looks like politics may be affecting the world of gaming again. Amidst the recent tension escalations between the US and Iran, some Iranian players claim that they have been blocked from using Call of Duty: Modern Warfare servers.
One such player, hamoun76, made his trouble with Modern Warfare known on Reddit. He explained that when he tried to access the online servers of the game, he found that he had been blocked. He blames Activision for the offense, and from the way he words his post, he's not the only Iranian player to experience these issues. He also notes that he wasn't offered a refund for the blocked services.
However, he did discover that players could circumvent the Modern Warfare block through the use of a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or mobile data. Both methods have their issues, though. Using a VPN messes up the player's ping, and therefore their online experience, and if Activision did block Iranian players, it'll likely lockout mobile data usage soon as well.
It is possible, however, that the situation is a misunderstanding. Iranian player SpeedingCrowd72 took to Bungie's Help forum yesterday to claim that the developer had blocked him out of Destiny 2's servers, but other guardians came to the developer's defense and offered alternative scenarios and solutions.
The consensus that guardians came to told SpeedingCrowd72 that developers didn't get involved in political situations and that Crowd should check with their Internet Service Provider (ISP) to get to the bottom of things. As it turned out, it was an issue on SpeedingCrowd72's end, not Bungie's. The guardian's ISP was having trouble accepting the data necessary to contact the game's servers.
This same situation could be playing out with Iranian Modern Warfare players then. Admittedly, however, the Destiny 2 case only involved one player (one vocal player anyway), while hamoun76's Reddit post hints that the Modern Warfare block has affected multiple individuals.
As of this writing, Activision hasn't commented on the accusations, but it's just like hamoun76's Reddit post states: It's weird that Activision would suddenly block servers to paying customers (unless surreptitiously directed to by outside sources) without any prior warnings. No one in the Reddit post has offered any other solutions or possibilities either -- except for the aforementioned parenthetical statement. As it stands now, only time will tell what's going on when or if Activision responds.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.