Dedicated user servers and mod tools are NECESSARY if any games wants to have longevity and a lasting community.

The lifespan of the game is supposed to be one full year. It's not once every 5 years release like a lot of other PC games.

The game CANNOT have a competitive scene, custom maps, or different playstyles without these. Some people want to play cod the vanilla experience, some want a more competitive tuned experience, and others want a more simulation experience (even if there is better games for that)

It definitely can and will, Black Ops 2 had a great competitive PC scene where we were playing online cup brackets with 50+ teams almost monthly. Modtools and server browser is not necessary but would we like the ability to rent dedicated servers to host our personal private matches? Hell yes. The fact is that the game is much more friendly to customizations and setting custom rules that you don't need modtools and it's a waste of development time that just splits the community.

I guess people here don't work in corporate environments or anything because they don't understand that certain aspects of a product you invest into, and others you invest into after you've seen significant demand. A server browser and modtools is a waste of dev time to have a few cod4 players come play for a month then leave.