Recent news that the PC version of Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops would have dedicated servers went over well with the crowd that rushed to sign petitions and otherwise expressed digital outrage over the fact that the last Call of Duty game, Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2, didn't ship with that kind of support. But, it's hard to believe that same mob will find the details of a new partnership with GamerServers.com to exclusively provide the service that much more agreeable.
According to IGN, Activision and Treyarch have inked an agreement with GameServers.com, making it the exclusive provider of dedicated servers for Black Ops. In the end, this means users who want to create their own servers will both have to use GameServers and pony up some dough to the company. But it bears noting that Treyarch will be providing a stable of free servers for players to use as they please, as well.
== TEASER ==Prospective server owners can expect ranked severs, which can support up to 18 people, to cost a cool $14.95 a month. Unranked servers that are able to support up to 24 players will cost .99 cents per player per month. Discounts on the former are available via the GamerServers.com pre-order page if users want to prepay for the support in three, six, or 12-month increments.
User-rented servers will give their owner the ability to kick, ban, and configure at will, according to Treyarch community manager Josh Olin. Ranked servers, however, will have fewer options as these matches have criteria that can't be fiddled with by users.
"Nobody will have to rent a dedicated server through GameServers in order to play the game," Olin told IGN. "But for anybody who wants to run their own server, it will be run from GameServers.com."
Treyarch's free servers will go live on the game's launch date, November 9. There's been no word on how long those servers will stay active.