While those who suffered the slings, arrows and unbearable social graces of the Modern Warfare 2 midnight launch lines have been playing the game for half a day now, those who decided to purchase and download the game through Steam won't be able to unlock their copy of the game until Friday morning at the stroke of midnight. If you've bought a retail copy of the game, Steam will go ahead and unlock it now -- the delay only seems to apply to the digitally distributed version.

It looks like the game was initially delayed to unlock at midnight on Thursday, but at some point this morning, an additional 24 hours was tacked on to the postponement. Valve and Infinity Ward still haven't commented on why Steam users are being forced to wait -- we'll see if we can get an answer from them.

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