While DICE strongly criticized the decision by Infinity Ward to abandon dedicated servers with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on the PC platform, DICE has been attempting to clarify their position on dedicated servers going forward.

While the company isn’t stopping the practice of using dedicated servers, apparently to start with if you want to host private matches with the upcoming release of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, you will have to rent a server from one of the company’s authorized server providers.

In the past ranked servers were only available by renting the server from authorized ranked server providers, but DICE provided the server files that users could download and use to host their own un-ranked servers for matches and practice. This was popular, of course, because the modding community could also develop new maps and other forms of play to use on these un-ranked servers.

According to DICE, the decision to move in this direction to start with is all about limiting access to the server files in hopes of protecting the games from hacks and cheating, which has been a problem with previous Battlefield titles. DICE claims that they are not making money from the authorized server provider program and, in fact, it is the providers that make the money used to cover server rental as well as bandwidth, which is a big cost in running any dedicated server.

While DICE has not explained exactly where game might go in the future, at least to start with the company plans to take an aggressive stand to curb the cheating on the PC platform by taking this route. Still, most in the community expect that in the future DICE will make the private server files public, while the server providers will still be charged as they have in the past with offering the ranked servers at a per slot rate. The PC version of BFBC2 is still on track to be released March 2nd alongside the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. From the latest that we hear, the PC beta is still scheduled to take place starting January 28th with the PC beta codes to be distributed at some point on January 26th.