Ah come on Funk, you're taking that far too seriously. But I'll play devil's advocate.CantFaketheFunk said:
It's not so much that it was cut that irked so many, but the manner in which they announced it. It's a very neat feature for players to have that takes the pace off of gunfights quite nicely, but it isn't the be all and end all.
The problem was IW's representative just hand waving it by stating the game 'is not balanced for lean,' and asking for no further mention to be made of it. Besides creating an overnight meme [http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=91562] it came across as incredibly lazy. When TF2 lost grenades there was a well thought out reasoning behind it that Valve could call upon to swat down nay-sayers. Here the tone (along with the various other missing features) gave a distinct impression that they simply couldn't be bothered.
The feature in itself isn't particularly important, but it seems to have been taken as a symbol of Infinity Ward turning it's back on PC players who have been buying (and admittedly pirating in great numbers, which may have at least something to do with why) their games for six years and supported them back when they were those people who had left 2015 and EA to make their own games. Although it's a slightly silly view point it's still a common one.
But that's largely irrelevant now, because lean is back and it's awesome.
