Plutonium

H3X1C Bought the game this morning, both for the peace of mind of having virtually infinite backups through my Steam account, giving Treyarch the money they deserve for making BO2 and the ability to use Lime to extract models from it (i'm working on the TFA Wonder Weapons pack).

@Mr-Android Are all the points that i mentioned valid? Can i have any confirmation on the friends list and pre-game lobbies? (they are the biggest nuisance i have encountered)

As for "morally the right thing to do", Activision certainly hasn't behaved well lately, so i'm skeptical about giving them my money, even at a discount.

EDIT: Just checked the forums again, looks like the Plutonium team will stop serving the BO2 files. One more reason to buy the Steam release, i guess. I should probably edit the initial post to take this into consideration.

Plutonium is shaping up to be one of the best versions of BO2, but i'm still questioning whether or not i should buy the Steam version. I looked around the forums, Googled some info and played the Plutonium release myself. Here are the pros and cons of these versions:

Steam:

• Has Single-Player Campaign, Multiplayer and Zombies.
• You can join pre-game lobbies, which lets you play matches from start to end.
• Still retains a significant player count.

• Unless you're playing Custom Games, you have no idea who you'll be playing with.
• The official servers have a ton of cheaters. In addition, there's an unpatched RCE exploit (a MASSIVE issue).
• Overpriced.

Plutonium:

• Has server browser.
• Community servers are customized and curated.
• Free.

• Only has Multiplayer and Zombies.
• You can only connect to matches that have already started.
• Not very populated.

As of when i'm writing this, the Steam release is available at a 67% discount, which will end on the 17th of this month. The price reduction is definetly very welcome and mitigates one of the cons, but is temporary.

I read the Announcements tab on these forums and it says that the developers may be able to add their own friends list system to the Plutonium version, which would imply that having more than one player in a pre-game lobby may become possible, but, for now, this is only speculation.

EDIT: Just re-checked the forums, looks like the Plutonium devteam will stop serving the BO2 files with their package to avoid legal problems, which will make a Steam copy mandatory. The update will take a while to come out, but when it does, a pre-owned copy will be needed.

Conclusion: should i buy it?