EA to Shut Down Old Game Servers - BF2, Red Alert 3 And More

[Sanunes]

valve doesnt really have much to do with the sales, but now that you mention it, its true, battlefield 2 was on sale not long ago, its not just battlefront 2 customers the ones that were scammed

EA you fucking disgusting piece of shit

It doesn't matter that EA didn't find a solution there are already 3rd party solutions to the problem and EA might have kept the servers up longer if GameSpy wasn't being shut down.

Despite EA's lack of a solution, the online service GameRanger already supports games like Battlefront 2, C&C 3 and Battlefield 1942; meaning players will have a third-party solution when the shutdown occurs. Currently, then, the biggest casualties appear to be Battlefield 2?and popular mods like Project Reality?and the Crysis games.

Source [http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/05/12/ea-gamespy-shutdown-update/]

I doubt it was the intent of the author of the original article here, but it feels like a little more research should have been done into the why they were being shutdown. EA might be responsible for not investing time or money into setting up a new set of servers if it doesn't violate some sort of contract already established. At the same time I doubt they would have gone anywhere if GameSpy was staying open.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

valve doesnt really have much to do with the sales, but now that you mention it, its true, battlefield 2 was on sale not long ago, its not just battlefront 2 customers the ones that were scammed

EA you fucking disgusting piece of shit

It doesn't matter that EA didn't find a solution there are already 3rd party solutions to the problem and EA might have kept the servers up longer if GameSpy wasn't being shut down.

Despite EA's lack of a solution, the online service GameRanger already supports games like Battlefront 2, C&C 3 and Battlefield 1942; meaning players will have a third-party solution when the shutdown occurs. Currently, then, the biggest casualties appear to be Battlefield 2?and popular mods like Project Reality?and the Crysis games.

Source [http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/05/12/ea-gamespy-shutdown-update/]

I doubt it was the intent of the author of the original article here, but it feels like a little more research should have been done into the why they were being shutdown. EA might be responsible for not investing time or money into setting up a new set of servers if it doesn't violate some sort of contract already established. At the same time I doubt they would have gone anywhere if GameSpy was staying open.

the problem is the sales theyve been having for the last couple of weeks, if those sales hadnt happened i wouldnt be this pissed right now, they have essentially sold you a car without engine, and while 3rd party solutions exist, thats no excuse, EA tricked people into buying multiplayer-centric games and will not provide a solution to gamespy's shutdown, an event that will certainly affect the multiplayer aspect of those games

hell just look at bungie, those guys patched the original halo to still work even after gamespy's shutdown, hell even the guys at relic, they patched CoH after their server provider was bought by ubisoft, CoH now uses steamworks for matchmaking, that is worth a lot of respect

almost noone likes to see the servers of a game shutdown, but i think most people acknowledge it is a fact of life, EA however are in a position to avoid this, they simply choose not to, in fact, they decided to profit from the situation

 

[shrekfan246]

I thought these were being shut down because Gamespy was shutting down?

Yeah, this confuses me as well, particularly because of the mention of Neverwinter Nights, which (I believe) EA isn't involved with in any way. But NN does use Gamespy, which was announced last month to be closing at the end of this month.

But then, the community here loves taking every opportunity they can to hate on EA, so I guess it was only logical to take the same "Gamespy servers closing" report from EA themselves and spin it around.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Red Alert 3 sticks out there...it's still relatively active, isn't it? As earlier posters have also pointed out, Battlefield 2 is pretty popular and active as well. It's a shame whenever one of these lists is drawn up.

Most of these games run on Gamespy, which is being turned off.

EA had previously said they were 'working on something,' clearly what they were working on was the press release to say these games would all die with it, foolish hope that it was that EA might migrate onto Origin or Battlelog for these games.

This has made today a really bad day, I fucking love Battlefield 2.

 

[Sanunes]

Red Alert 3 sticks out there...it's still relatively active, isn't it? As earlier posters have also pointed out, Battlefield 2 is pretty popular and active as well. It's a shame whenever one of these lists is drawn up.

Most of these games run on Gamespy, which is being turned off.

EA had previously said they were 'working on something,' clearly what they were working on was the press release to say these games would all die with it, foolish hope that it was that EA might migrate onto Origin or Battlelog for these games.

This has made today a really bad day, I fucking love Battlefield 2.

The problem I see is no matter what EA would do they are going to get a negative reaction because people look for reasons to "show how horrible EA is". What I wonder is if the reaction would have been any different if they were able to keep the matchmaking alive, but it had to be played through Origin and since all those games pre-date Origin they can be freely added anytime already, but it would become Origin mandatory.

 

[fix-the-spade]

The problem I see is no matter what EA would do they are going to get a negative reaction because people look for reasons to "show how horrible EA is". What I wonder is if the reaction would have been any different if they were able to keep the matchmaking alive, but it had to be played through Origin and since all those games pre-date Origin they can be freely added anytime already, but it would become Origin mandatory.

I'd be fine with that, I've bought BF2 three times over the years, I'd pay ten bucks to get it again on Origin if I thought the game would still be working.

If they ran a free transfer I still have my BF2 account and CD keys.

Mandatory Origin is better than nothing, since Gamespy was never EA's to command they get a free pass on that (and seemingly everything non-Steam ran on Gamespy until about 2011). I agree to an extent that nothing they could do would get a perfect response, but this is the absolute worst they can do, it's just another reinforcement of EA's 'Fuck You' attitude to anything beyond it's latest and greatest product.

BF2 has more players (about 8-9000 daily depending on where you're looking) than Call of Duty: Ghosts does on the PC right now (including me), so it's not like nobody is going to care when it dies either.

 

[Strazdas]

I know people have built cry-2 servers because I've been on one, ( pc ) but I can't comment about anything else on the list.

its very likely. people always build private servers. especially pirates who cant play on official servers. there are Rust servers even. from what i heard they are full of hackers and generally shitty though.

server power needed depends on what is run on server. i remmember when i built machines specifically for server use. lots of ram and reliable HDD was the main factors back then. its true that modern machines can run them in background without much trouble. however there still are quite a few games where a powerful server is needed since they calculate A LOT of things even such as enemy detection, meaning wallhacks do not work sicne the server simply does not tell you where the enemy is unless it decides you can "spot" him. most of these are still run by companies since running that omn your own would be costly.

Glad you pointed that out. A good few of them have dedicated servers. However, it doesn't matter, since they also use Gamespy which is shutting down by the end of this month. So their multiplayer's going to die no matter what. It isn't all EA's fault, this is true, however you'd think they would try to migrate the most popular games like Battlefield 2 over to Origin or something.

yes, on one hand its good that GameSpyware is finally going down on the other its likely going to end up a situation like the Homeworld games where you need 3rd party programs because official connector is long dead. luckily more and more such programs are actually poping up now. dont remmeber any names now but i saw one that worked for something like 40 old games multiplayer simulation.

 

[DoctorM]

Honestly, EA could have bought a lot of good will just by offering a couple buck off upgrade coupon for keys/accounts.
I might be pissed, but I'd be more likely to use the coupon than boycott EA.

 

[Elijin]

Wait isnt BF2 a game where the servers are maintained by others? Way back in 2003-9 I was part of a gaming network that hosted various servers like counter strike and natural selection and BF2. So why is this dependent on EA? Or was there someone awful login server between the players are the actual servers?


Edit: Oh right, Gamespy was the regulating body for BF2.

 

[sXeth]

This is further sign that the age of always online gaming is not the right way. Seems really sad to see NWN and NWN2 go on top of so many other very amazing games.

They are shutting down the multiplayer side. not the single player. Take a 5 second search before you proclaim DRM did it. Which this isn't even tied to because these games are older than always online DRM.

NWN a rather mediocre singleplayer game, mostly worth noting for its excellent toolset and strong multiplayer community. (though the second expansion was fairly decent)

As for DRM, he isn't claiming that this is a factor here. Rather, he's pointing out that EA's willingness to toss aside even well loved games once they've aged a bit is a strong reason to be wary of modern releases that require an internet connection.

NWN actually makes me wonder what they're even shutting down in some of these cases. NWN's authentication/gamespy servers have been off for more then a few years now. With the whole community running off forums/direct connecting to servers, and most major servers running their own authentication scripts. Unless they mean the patch hosting that I think is/was still on Bioware's site.

 

[mrdude2010]

Hopefully someone will find a way to host servers so the games don't go down entirely, because a lot of these have dedicated, if not top 20 in size, fanbases. Neverwinter Nights, for example, pretty much depends on its online community to keep going.

 

[Jay Gaines]

Im probably gonna get trolled for this. I didnt see anything about bf2 bad company for ps3 being switched off. IS IT?

 

[Bill Hathaway]

So we pay for a game, that we are forced to use a server, that is going off line, leaving us with nothing. So when do we get the refund and how or do we need to all get together and do a class action law suit. If this happens to these other games and BF2, then what will happen to all the other games.

 

[Agent Smith]

I just installed C & C Generals Zero hour and I couldn't connect for the life of me. I found this forum through Google and figured I'd share this so all may not be lost.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/command-conquer-multiplayer-saved-from-the-demise-/1100-6420950/

http://cnc-online.net/


Now I have BF2 and I just wonder if single player will still work since you still have to log in in order to play single player. I found that to be pretty stupid on EA's part.

I never played BF2142 except the demo. I wonder if the demo is down as well since that too requires log in?

Edit- Found a solution to BF2. http://forum.bf1942.sk/gamespy

 

[Carlos Ali]

I was searchig on the web and i found that for bf2 there is a revive proyect (go to battlelog.com) but I tryed it out , and is a piece of shit, is very difficult to understand how it works, and the list of servers that were in the multiplayer option of battlefield doesnt longer exist, you gotta know the server ip, in order to play in that server, and by the way you have to update the game to the latest version if you wanna play in the revive proyect server, Im really mad now with EA and gamespy -.- I used to play bf2 daily on my vacations

 

[Carlos Ali]

the webpage of the bf2 revive proyect is http://www.battlelog.co/ not .com

 

[Jerry Edwards]

Battlefield 2142 Multiplayer is up and running on a community game fix.
Goto Battlefield2142.co for all the information from start to finish. If you have any questions let me know..

AirJerr

 

[BoogieManFL]

Same thing is going to happen more and more.

Some day I'll be old and nostalgic and want to play through Mass Effect series again, only to load up and be unable to play any of the DLC I paid money for because it can't connect to the servers. Won't even be able to play the multiplayer with friends because it's brilliantly online only.

Then I'll remember back to the news article that said EA has finished sucking the life out of BioWare and has discarded the desiccated husk in to the ditch with all the others that came before it.