Sound the alarms – the internet has reacted badly to something. Infinity Ward shared the first trailer for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare earlier in the week, and the fans clearly aren’t happy.
At the time of writing, the trailer has amassed 7,902,556 views on YouTube, with 178, 679 upvotes to 314, 938 downvotes. This seems to be by the design of angry fans, who are campaigning to mass downvote the game. Everybody needs something to aim for, I guess.
It’s unclear what they think this will achieve. I’m not entirely sure Infinity Ward will see that a small percentage of people clicked a little thumbs down icon and decide to abandon the project, but maybe I’m wrong.
I understand that the fans are upset on two main fronts. They’ve been pretty vocal for a while now about how they dislike the futuristic direction the COD franchise has taken in recent years, so Infinite Warfare resembles something of a middle finger.
They’re also peeved that the remaster of Modern Warfare, something the fans have been crying out for, will only be available as part of a pricey Infinite Warfare bundle.
Commenter Lorde Lightskin wrote:
100k dislikes in 24 hours in one day, great job guys. Let’s make it to 400k dislikes by tomorrow night?
Yeah! That’s something to be proud of, right? Personally, I’ve never held much truck with COD, but I’m actively starting to feel bad for the franchise. Seems like everybody is weighing in on it pretty heavily at the moment.
Plus, judging a game before you’ve even played it seems pretty dumb. Still, if the internet is good at anything, it’s cultivating indignant knee jerk reactions and nurturing them until they grow into self entitled campaigns.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and stand outside the Cadbury HQ and stamp my feet until they change the Creme Egg recipe back.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.