Activision, Treyarch and Infinity Ward have all released statements responding to the rumour that playing Call of Duty multiplayer in the future will require a subscription.
All three have assured gamers that they will never have to pay extra to play online - after a video leaked yesterday showing a supposed plan to implement subscription charges in the series.
Activision's Dan Amrich responded to the video directly in a blog post titled 'MW2 subscriptions? Nope.'
"There's a video that made the rounds today of a 360 player getting a glitchy, incomplete message that uses the phrase "Modern Warfare 2" and half of the word membership."
"This video shows just a glitch - since you can access a Live subscription renewal from within the MW2 game interface, it appears some data got jammed between two parts of Live. It's not a secret portal to some nefarious plot to charge people for COD multiplayer - and there are no plans to do that" said Amrich.
Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling, better known to the CoD community as FourZeroTwo, echoed the sentiment in a tweet saying "nobody has to pay to play COD or MW2 multiplayer, nor will they."
He later posted a blog post further driving the point home.
"To be clear: There is not, and will never be, additional fees required to subscribe and play Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer."
Activison also confirmed to IGN that "Reports of a subscription membership in Modern Warfare 2 are not true. Activision has no plans to charge gamers to play Call of Duty multiplayer."
Finally, Treyarch's community manager finished the job by confirming that a subscription model is not being applied to Black Ops.
"No, you will not have to 'Pay to Play' #CODBlackOps Multiplayer either. Rumor -> Squashed."
The company-wide kibosh is sure to come as a disappointment to analyst and industry mystic Michael Pachter, who said monetisation of multiplayer was vital to the industry and urged Activision to lead the way with Call of Duty.
Oh and Activision CEO Bobby Kotick wants to do it as soon as possible because he likes money.
