When Activision announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered would be sold standalone, fans were delighted. They had been calling for the remastered shooter to be sold separately ever since it launched alongside Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare last year, and was only available as a bundle. However, now that the game is available on its own, some PC players are less than happy.

[UPDATE - Activision has released a list of known issues in the game and has either resolved many of these or is scheduling fixes for them. That list can be found here.]

The standalone version Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered went on sale yesterday, July 27, but immediately, the game's Steam page has been flooded with negative reviews. Out of 905 reviews, 538 of these are negative, leading to a Mostly Negative Steam rating. Although the majority of the game's 905 reviews were posted by people who purchased the game with Infinite Warfare, many of the 341 reviews posted by standalone players seem to be negative too.

So why is everyone so unhappy? The main factor seems to be that no one is playing the game's multiplayer and those who are online only seem to want to play Team Deathmatch, explains one review. Multiplayer is the prime reason why so many purchased Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered in the first place, but according to data from SteamCharts, it has hit an average of 252.8 players in the last 30 days and a peak of just 452 players in the last 48 hours. It's worth nothing that one Infinite Warfare player got a refund from Microsoft last year due to the fact that no one was playing its multiplayer on PC.

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The other issue is that the game seems to be poorly optimized. One review said that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered is so broken that not even (cartoon character) Bob the Builder can fix it, while players on social media explained that the game is "plagued" by the same performance issues that other Call of Duty games have suffered from on PC.

Others aren't happy about the price, saying that $40 is totally unreasonable price for the remaster, especially as it is only marginally cheaper than Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which is a brand new game. The $15 for the Variety Map Pack, which includes just four additional maps, is also being called a crying shame.

Many fans are asking themselves why Activision consistently fails to do right by Call of Duty's PC player base. Fans implore the publisher to take cues from its other series, such as Destiny 2, which includes PC-specific features, so that they can finally enjoy the franchise on their platform of choice and won't just be forced to play it on a console instead.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered is now available standalone on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

Source: Reddit, Steam, SteamCharts