Activision has once again moved to quell rumours that they’ll charge a fee for Call of Duty online multiplayer.

Industry analyst Michael Pachter recently stated that he believed that Activision was soon going to introduce a subscription charge for Call of Duty: Black Ops. However, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg has told Industry Gamers they company will never charge for Call of Duty’s online multiplayer.

“Are we going to be charging for multiplayer? The answer is no. The experience you have out of the box, connecting with the online community to play Call of Duty is absolutely integral to the experience and we’ll never charge for that. It’s not going to be something we’ll attempt to monetize; it’s part of the package,”

Hirshberg then went onto directly discuss Pachter’s comments.

“Nothing we or anyone else tries is going to work if it doesn’t have tremendous value for people and add a tremendous value to the gaming experience. He’s [Pachter] probably looking at meta-trends in the world and in culture about online services and new ways things should be monetized from Netflix to cloud-based computing.”

“So there are certainly a lot of behavioural shifts towards long-standing online relationships… But at the end of the day, all I’m trying to get across is I can unequivocally say we will never, ever charge for the multiplayer.”

Activision has previously made strong hints that it’s looking to make more money from the online aspect of Call of Duty. Modern Warfare 2 saw the introduction of two online expansion packs  with extra maps– the Resurgence and Stimulus Packages – which both sold rather well at over £10 each. However, it could be argued that the publishers desire to make a profit, is starting to make them out of touch with gamers.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is currently sitting atop the UK Chart for the second week in a row.

So Train2Game, after there was so much outrage on the Facebook page yesterday are you reassured by the comments from Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg? And if Activision really want to make more money from the Call of Duty series, how do you think they should go about doing it?

As usual, you can leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.