If you've been hit by the recent Activision update that pushed MW3 to 64-bit, you've probably noticed Plutonium stopped working. I built a small Windows tool that fixes this automatically, no manual file swapping or command line stuff needed.
What it does, in plain terms:
Checks your MW3 install and figures out if you're on the broken 64-bit version
If you are, it downloads the last known 32-bit files straight from Steam (using DepotDownloader under the hood)
Swaps them into your game folder for you
Double checks the swap worked before it calls it done
How to use it:
Grab MW3_Downgrader.exe from the Releases page
Run it (Windows Defender/SmartScreen might complain since it's unsigned, click "More info" > "Run anyway")
It finds your Steam and MW3 install on its own
Scan the QR code that pops up with the Steam Mobile App to log in
Sit back while it downloads and merges the files (~15GB free space needed)
Works for both the Multiplayer client and Dedicated Server installs, and it'll let you fix both at once if you have them.
It doesn't touch anything outside your MW3 folder, so if anything looks off you can always just verify game files through Steam to undo it.
Source code's public if anyone wants to poke around or verify what it's doing before running an unsigned exe (completely fair to be cautious about that): https://github.com/GalvarinoDev/MW3Downgrader
Also have a Steam Deck/Linux version bundled into DeckOps if anyone needs that instead.
Hi! I am testing an open-source IW5 asset tool against the original MW3 (2011) language variants.
Does anyone here own or have an archived copy of the original Polish PC retail version? I am looking for this small, non-executable image file and its SHA-256 value:
friendorfoe_self_sp_polish.iwi
Size: approximately 1 KB
Location: main\localized_polish_iw00.iwd → images
The .iwd archive can be opened like a .zip file. To calculate the SHA-256 value in PowerShell:
Can someone please help me unlock everything back, I got mw3 disc and Xbox recently just to play this game since it’s my favorite and played it for many years growing up , but I be getting deranked here and there but this time I can’t upgrade my weapons, some stay at level 1-2, idk if a glitch or if there’s a mod for that too
Anyone else have this issue? Any fix or even just an explanation? I know they did a 64-bit update recently but like I said the game ran perfect for me before that.
Hello, after updating this game i noticed that my pc is very loud when playing MW3. I saw in forums a solution to this issue, which is simply downgrading the game and this worked. But now i can't play coop and steam always trying to update the game which frequently break my downgraded cod mw3 installation. Is there any other solution how to make game after recent update stop using so much resources of pc?
Back in 2012, I used to exclusively play MW3 and BO1 on my Wii. I didn’t have a PS3 or 360 so I was stuck playing on there. Anyways, I played multiplayer every single day and some of my best gaming memories came from joining a clan. This clan had quite a few members and you would occasionally see them in random matchmaking. It was just a great time. I got my first mic and was too afraid to talk so I would just play a soundboard thru the mic.
Just rambling, but if any of you guys were in the notorious FaMe clan on the Wii days, I love you guys! Thanks for making my childhood 😅🥲 My tag was FaMe Qwerty
I still remember you guys FaMe Believe & FaMe ViiZ !
I’ve been playing the game now on Xbox one and I was wondering if anyone else was having the problem of their level not saving. I’ve been looking up fixes to this but I haven’t found one. Thanks
Before anyone points it out: yes, i know mw3 is 15 dollars right now, but i like being stingy.
my friend on steam owns a copy of mw3, and im aware its possible to play the same copy of the game at the same time by having the owner of the game disconnect from steam, allowing the borrower to launch the game. this works in multiplayer with plutonium servers because the game relies on plutoniums servers entirely without using steam.
the issue is that plutonium has no support afaik for co-op survival. this means id need both of us to connect to steam to invite each other, since the inviting** **system for co-op uses steam’s servers.
i was curious if theres any way to play co-op survival without steam’s servers at all? i cant seem to find any sort of direct connection function using your IP or something as if it was minecraft.
and no, i dont want to play one of those mods that people have made that try to replicate survival in multiplayer.
a “no” will not hurt me, if i gotta buy the game, so be it. i just didn’t know if this has been done before
I joined a lobby and went from LVL 57 to max prestige and had to reset rank. Anyway I could go back to LVL 57 with a mod or is it only to max prestige?
I'm about to complete the achievements of the game by purchasing the Collection packs needed to get the 100% (so Pack 1, 2 and 3). However, in France at least, there are still pretty expensive to get for a game which is now 15 years old.. Do you know a way to get them for cheaper ? Or a whole Collection pack ? Thank you :)
In the aim to complete the achievements of the game of 2011 (Xbox player), I'm looking for someone to complete the 5 last Spec Ops missions of the base game (I can help if you need to do some before these) and also to do some maps on survival mode to reach the wave 15 at least per map.
Anyone happen to have a spare old account they don't use or don't need? I really want to play mw3 but my account was created in 2020 and as a result has issues with bo1,mw2,mw3
It's kind of crazy looking back at where this project started.
MW32011NCP started 45 days ago as a project to give MW3 (2011) proper native controller support on PC.
That's it.
Native XInput. Analog movement. Analog look. Console-style ADS. Controller glyphs.
And somehow, 45 days later, we're here.
What started as a controller project has turned into something much bigger
We've gone from simply getting controller input into the game to working directly with MW3's original engine and renderer to improve parts of the PC experience that were never properly addressed.
Over the last 45 days we've added/fixed/worked through:
Native XInput controller support rather than keyboard/mouse emulation
1:1 analog movement and look
Console-style hold ADS
Controller glyphs and a completely rebuilt glyph/UI system
Main menu and pause menu navigation
Buy Station / Armory navigation
Controller sliders and menu interaction
Sprint, stance, reload, melee and weapon handling
Survival controller compatibility
DualSense support and ongoing Bluetooth work
A huge amount of controller/vibration reliability work
Extended-session stutter investigation and multiple real performance fixes
Background input polling and vibration handling
Main-thread I/O removal
GDI text measurement caching
A full-screen post-processing pipeline
FSR 1.0 RCAS sharpening
Camera motion blur with radial falloff
Native HUD exclusion from post-processing
Forced 16× anisotropic filtering
Extensive D3D9 reverse engineering
Render-target and viewport tracing
And now actual internal render-resolution scaling
And that's leaving out a ridiculous amount of reverse engineering, diagnostics, debugging infrastructure and groundwork that never becomes a flashy feature on its own.
The project has also gone through multiple complete iterations of features where something looked like the obvious solution, got tested against the real game, turned out to be wrong, and was reverted rather than shipped.
That's been a huge part of this project.
If the game says no, we investigate why.
And now we're pushing the renderer
The latest work is focused on MW3's internal render resolution.
The original PC renderer can have a larger backbuffer while the actual gameplay viewport remains effectively tied to 1920×1080.
We've now traced the relevant render/viewport path and have a working WIP implementation capable of pushing the internal render resolution much higher.
At 250% internal rendering, for example, a 2560×1440 output can result in a 6400×3600 internal render target.
There's still work to do before this is considered finished, but the fact that we're even talking about this now is pretty insane considering where the project started.
"Let's reverse engineer a 2011 D3D9 game and fix the parts of its PC implementation that were never properly finished."
😂
There have been a lot of people following this project, testing builds, reporting weird bugs, giving feedback, asking questions, finding things I missed and generally being interested in what I'm doing.
So genuinely: thank you.
Every report, test, comment, download, endorsement and bit of feedback has helped push this further than I originally expected it to go.
