OG Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 servers pulled offline thanks to hackers

The original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) servers have been pulled offline after players reported seeing self-replicating malware.

It’s been a tale of two halves in the world of Call of Duty as of late. On one hand, players are furious at the state of Warzone. Nicki Minaj, 21 Savage, and a cat have all been announced as new operators which is, fair to say, not something you’d have seen coming when Warzone was first released in 2020. Conversely though, Call of Duty games of yesteryear are making a comeback on Xbox much to the delight of everyone. Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Modern Warfare 3 have seen massive player spikes after both games benefitted from matchmaking updates. Xbox Series X consoles even began selling out for the first time in forever as CoD fans flocked to dive into their nostalgic favourites. It’s a slight bummer then that the OG Modern Warfare 2 has now been taken offline on Steam.

Modern Warfare 2 is a legendary game.

As reported by PC Gamer, Activision pulled the game’s Steam servers offline after PC players reported encountering a number of hacked lobbies - and quite severe hacked lobbies at that. Hackers were reportedly infecting fellow players with a self-spreading worm virus. On the official Call of Duty Updates Twitter account, devs wrote, “Multiplayer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) on Steam was brought offline while we investigate reports of an issue.”

The Wacatac.B!ml worm was first detected by players in June but it took well over a month for devs to seemingly take any action on addressing the issue. PC Gamer added that the malware was “coded specifically for MW2”, according to one Steam forum user.

The tweet announcing the server shutdown was sent out on 26 July. As of today, 31 July, no update has been provided and the Steam servers remain offline. It’s not known how long this temporary takedown will last for, but we’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for an update.