Nadeshot defends Modern Warfare 2 amid mass criticism

100 Thieves CEO and former CoD pro Matthew ‘Nadeshot’ Haag has given his honest verdict on Modern Warfare 2, providing a slightly more complimentary opinion than some other prominent members of the competitive CoD community.

Before he was the successful CEO of one of the biggest esports organizations in the world, Nadeshot was a professional Call of Duty player, representing OpTic Gaming for almost the entirety of his career and winning multiple major championships.

He retired during the Advanced Warfare season but, in recent years, has stayed within the CoD scene with his LA Thieves Call of Duty League franchise, so he’s always stayed active with the community and, more importantly, kept winning championships, including the World Championship in 2022.

Fast forward a few months and Modern Warfare 2 has officially dropped, as the most successful CoD launch to date, surpassing 2011’s Modern Warfare 3 with $800m in sales.

Despite the wild commercial success of the game, there has been some criticism levied at it, from missing features to bugs and glitches that affect the overall gameplay.

With that in mind, though, Nadeshot gave his verdict on the game during a Twitch stream after launch, suggesting the backlash may be a bit much.

“I have seen every iteration of Call of Duty and I have played every single one of the games,” he said. “At the end of the day, Call of Duty is Call of Duty. You get a different dev studio, you get some different maps, you get some different guns, maybe the game feels different like AW to Ghosts, Black Ops 1 to MW3.

“But, it’s Infinity Ward man. The guns are fun, the game is just trying to work itself out and the way it’s going to play. But there’s just not that much variation. If you enjoyed playing Call of Duty in the past, I promise you will enjoy playing Call of Duty in this game.”

He finished by saying that while it’s only been a couple of days, he’s been playing and enjoying public matches in MW2.

Evidently, while Nadeshot might not be competing every day and playing in tournaments himself, he still cares a lot about the franchise and believes that Modern Warfare 2 is just as good a CoD game as any other.

It’s still very early days for MW2 and, with a two-year lifecycle, players will be hoping it manages to stay fresh and can keep being fun going forward.