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

[shirkbot]

Oh my God. I'm no big fan of EA but grow up. Hamachi is a thing.

I think it's more about the broader implications of always-online gaming and letting the creator control their product after it's been sold to you, rather than much direct outrage about specific games. Hamachi is a thing, but it only works if a game supports LAN.
However, if you want to prevent a lot of people from complaining then EA should provide the EULA before purchase and they should have a planned service termination date listed at the very top in big, friendly letters.

Although the Titanfall part of your comment only makes the whole thing funnier, since this is the fate Titanfall has waiting for it, only unlike most of these games it's unlikely there will be anyone unset about the shutdown.

You are right, I doubt anyone will care. I know I won't because there has never been a game I care all that much about after six years. Besides by then there will doubtless be a sequel that has hopefully improved on the original. (ya know, like what happened to battlefield.)

Just a friendly interjection: 6 years is a really long time, in fact it's inabouts a quarter of my entire lifespan to date, and as such I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with such a final statement as "never." I still log time on Psychonauts now and then, and that's getting close to 10 years old, no sequels. If you'd like a fairer example, then TF2. Just because you personally don't care so much for things in your gaming history doesn't mean that you never will or that other people don't, but again I'll stop complaining when they do as I said above. You can prevent a lot of things by being upfront with people.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Has multiple sales on various multiplayer centric games the past few weeks.

Announces servers closing next month.

And people wonder why the above image is a thing.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Why, thank you EA. And thank you Valve for offering a discounted Battefield 2 Complete one week before word spreads that the servers are going down...

Valve doesn't set the sales nor the pricing, most evident by the recent Activision sale.

Spoiler

But yes, the timing couldn't have been any better as I've seen several of those titles appear on one weekly sale or another for some time now.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

That is kind of annoying because I still play Crysis from time to time. At least I can still setup a VLAN setup of some kind. At least I think I can, if not, I shall be quite pissed.

 

[lee1287]

well they shut down NHL 10 A While ago. Welcome to my pain people!

 

[Zulnam]

Didn't they make a statement last month saying that they will find a solution for the BF2 servers after gamespy shuts down? Is this their solution?


But no, seriously, you guys, EA needs to shut off the servers so they can save a few thousand dollars since EA is a small company and they don't have that much money, you guys. I mean, this is the kind of situation that only a leading publisher, let's say "second largest based on revenue", could handle and EA is small you guys, seriously.

And besides, you guys, they are old and lol just nobs playing them lol come to 21st century srsly

 

[Nikolaz72]

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

Yea, a lot of these shut down way back when Gamespy shut down (Neverwinters/Battlefront/Command and Conquer generals).

Fans are still keeping them alive and will still keep them alive.

Only thing EA might still be keeping alive is key validation.. And if that's what they are shutting down then that'd just be shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[Spygon]

The final step in destroying the command and conquer series has come.

Good bye good friend

 

[tdylan]

This is connected to gamespy, it's not entirely EA's fault.
But I guess EA hating is a great way to get clicks on articles.

Hopefully EA will be able to get some of these transferred over to Origin.

BF2 and Crysis 2 seems likely.

I'm personally not a fan of origin and a strange thing happened when it debuted: my EA Games (C&C Generals and Zero Hour, BF2, and BF2142) began giving me an "invalid cd-key" message whenever I tried to play online. I figured it was EA trying to get me to switch over to Origin, but I couldn't find anything definitive on it.

This sucks though. I enjoyed those games. And while they were dicks about mod support for 2142, I'm hoping I can continue to play the BF2/C&C mods.

 

[james.sponge]

The one that gets me is them dropping "Neverwinter Nights" and "Neverwinter Nights 2" given that they both have fairly active communities with people even having built their own little pseudo-MMOs using it. Not my cup of tea, but I know a lot of people who are hugely into that (having met a lot of them playing Cryptic's Neverwinter).

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't NWN and NWN 2 allow you to establish your own private servers? I mean there are NWN 2 servers that bypass in-game server browser and gamespy altogether so they shouldn't be affected by EA's decision.

I never got into NWN multiplayer as I said, so I can't tell you. I was under the impression they required EA's servers to run though. I don't remember ever hearing anyone say they ran their own server.

While I'm on hiatus (playing ESO primarily) next time I drop into Neverwinter I'll see if I can find any of the guys who were telling me how hooked they were on the Multiplayer. I grouped with a few of them fairly regularly doing my Malabog's Castle grind.

It seems it does not need EA to run, there is a bunch of private servers for NWN 2 (just googled up some of them) so basically the decision will affect people who were using gamespy until now, other players will have fun as always.

 

[Karadalis]

Spoiler: Snip.

One second.. hasnt nwn and nwn2s server browser been shut down completly by gamespy anyways?

And doesnt it work with dedicated servers in both cases where you can still direct connect to IP adresses? Also werent those games made by Atari and not by EA?

It would be news to me that EA has any sway over what goes on in NWN since they never had their hand in it to begin with.

Gamespy had dropped their support for the game along with a shitton of other games some time ago but that doesnt mean that you cant still use them when you have a direct connect option that omits the whole login thing.

Being a BioWare game means EA has some degree of control over what should be done with the servers and yes, they shut down the master servers containing the list of servers you can connect to, an incovenience, but not as crippling as completely shutting down the multiplayer altogether, wich is pretty much exactly what they're doing.

Fortunately the game has LAN support, so it could be possible to set up an online lobby with Hamachi and similar means, but it's definitely not the same as playing on a dedicated server :/

The publisher is atari thought, the NWN games belong to atari and are still being sold by atari, no matter if bioware made them or not. And how can they "shut down multyplayer" if you are using direct connection anyways?

This is a legitimate question of mine since i wasnt aware that any gamespy services where still needed for direct connecting to nwn2 servers.

EA has no control over nwn and nwn 2 because they dont own jack shit.. the games where made before EA bought bioware or else EA would have been the publisher no? Cause it would be news to me that a publisher hires another publisher to do the publishing.

So in short EA has nothing to do with anything being shut down in those two games.

EDITH says:

Yup.. just as i guessed... person couple of posts over me confirmed that nothing at all will change for nwn and nwn2 due to the direct connection option.

So im still confused why those two games even made that list. Both arent owned by EA, both allready had the master server shut down.. and there is no "canceling the multyplayer" either. Gamespy allready abandoned both games some time ago. Nothing will change

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

This is connected to gamespy, it's not entirely EA's fault.
But I guess EA hating is a great way to get clicks on articles.

Hopefully EA will be able to get some of these transferred over to Origin.

BF2 and Crysis 2 seems likely.

the original halo will be patched so the multiplayer will still be playable, so yeah EA are a bunch of jerks, pulling the plug in many games that still have significant communities, not to mention they put the battlefront games on sale a week ago, not giving these news before the sale is a disgusting cash grabbing move

Why, thank you EA. And thank you Valve for offering a discounted Battefield 2 Complete one week before word spreads that the servers are going down...

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

 

[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.