GameSpy's New Owner Shuts Down Classic Multiplayer

[DustyDrB]

Battlefront 2 is safe, though? I actually jumped onto a server with a few friends a month or two ago. I hadn't played that game in yeeeaars, and struggled mightily (people were doing this tactic of dropping a bomb right on you. My friends and I were like, "What is happening?!?"). But yeah, there was a whole community there of people who still play that game regularly.

 

[lord.jeff]

This is annoying and rage is justified but I understand why it's happening, running a server costs money and these games aren't drawing in new players anymore. As long as Gamespy allows fan servers or for another company to take over I'd imagine that it'll work itself out within a month.

 

[AldUK]

Gamespy have been around for a really long time, at one point they were my go-to website for game info. I have also used Gamespy Arcade occasionally for a few games, so I'm a little sad at this, but I don't think they have really been relevant for some time now.

 

[iniudan]

The probable reason why theese servers were shut down is because nobody plays multiplayer on theese games anymore as all of the mentioned titles are any combination of old, unloved or succeeded.

I can tell you for certain that a good amount of people do in fact play Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 online yet. They have quite a larger community dedicated to it.

In the case of the first NWN, it server will most likely never die, in any foreseeable future, has no RPG with multiplayer, you can actually host your own MMO server, if you so wish, with complete mod tool (it actually the game dev tool =p), has yet to come replace it. It also multiplaform, simply due to how it was coded (you can take your windows install disk and simply use it install on Linux with some modification and it will run natively).

 

[rcs619]

Yeah, just checked. The original Sword of the Star's (also known as: The only good one) multi-player has been shut down too. I know for a fact that people still played it, and the mod community was pretty active as well. Haven't gotten the chance to see if the LAN mode still works, but here's hoping.

 

[A Raging Emo]

I'm pretty sure the Total War games are affected by this, at least ones from Medieval 2 and older, and there is a multiplayer community still playing it.

You can play most of those through Steam, I think. I don;t know about Rome and Medieval, but Empire, Napoleon and Shogun 2 you can, at least.

I never played Medieval online because you needed a Gamespy account, but I think you can play it through Steam.

 

[Nghtgnt]

How much does it cost to run servers?

I remember seeing a dev video for Guild Wars 2 prior to its release where they stated that running a server these days is actually fairly inexpensive (hence part of why the GW2 business model works). Assuming that this is true, I can still totally understand the business logic of shutting down a service they were providing at a cost to themselves, but I don't see a need for them to be dicks about it with the quote from Rebellion, "We have been informed that in order to do so would cost us tens of thousands of pounds a year - far in excess of how much we were paying previously." I'd rather they had just been honest about simply wanting to get out of the business of hosting servers.

Another interesting note there, "paying previously". So companies were STILL paying Gamespy to host servers for old games?

It would also be interesting to see if Gamespy told the makers of these games that they were shutting down the servers beforehand. The implication here being that if the company had enough advance warning the onus will have been on them to set up their own servers/service. On the other hand, if there wasn't enough advance warning then it sounds almost like blackmail.

 

[Frankster]

No more neverwinter night servers? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu even if i havent been on it in ages.

No more battlefront multi unless with direct IP is also seriously lame.

Hope soulstorm/dawn of war servers stay up (they havent been mentioned in the article), i do like to go back to that series when the mood strikes me.

Not cool new gamespy, not cool at all.

 

[Rad Party God]

WHAT!??, no more Neverwinter Nights!??


Now I'd seriously like to know wich other games are affected by this moronic decision, because as a hardcore PC gamer, I definitely have more than a few games with Gamespy's multiplayer service.

 

[RicoADF]

As crap as GameSpy was, a lot of developers back in the early millennium cut deals with GameSpy and made their software dependant of its multiplayer services.

Aaaaand here is the lesson. One that we will sadly eventually witness again with the current Online platforms. If you tie any part of your program to a third-party service, with no stand-alone alternative, then they will eventually pull the plug and your program will suffer.

No "ifs" here, the cost of perpetually offering a service is, in practice, infinite money. No company can support that, even if they wanted to, so all services are doomed to cease at some point in time.

Sadly, many developers/publishers know this, and just treat games as disposable products meant to be used and then discarded in favor of the newer ones, which is a shame for genuinely good games (Specially when the "replacements" fail to live up to the originals).

Today I can pick up any literary classic and read it again, or listen to some legendary music album, or re-watch some ancient movie. I hope for the day games are granted the same respect as creative endeavors, both by creators and audience.

Which is why we all need to push our governments to make laws that require such games to be patched and fixed to no longer requires the online once they no longer support them, especially for games that use the online just as DRM.

 

[maxmanrules]

The probable reason why theese servers were shut down is because nobody plays multiplayer on theese games anymore as all of the mentioned titles are any combination of old, unloved or succeeded.

Which is why there's an outcry in the first place. Nobody plays them.

There's an outcry because nobody plays them? The people who are pissed are the ones who play them, otherwise nobody would even NOTICE
I'm currently working on a NWN2 mod, and the NWN community is pretty big, I can tell you that.

 

[maxmanrules]

Yeah, just checked. The original Sword of the Star's (also known as: The only good one) multi-player has been shut down too. I know for a fact that people still played it, and the mod community was pretty active as well. Haven't gotten the chance to see if the LAN mode still works, but here's hoping.

Of course the LAN mode would work. It doesn't require connection to a server, just other people's computers on a local network.

 

[Mojo]

The probable reason why theese servers were shut down is because nobody plays multiplayer on theese games anymore as all of the mentioned titles are any combination of old, unloved or succeeded.

Which is why there's an outcry in the first place. Nobody plays them.

There's an outcry because nobody plays them? The people who are pissed are the ones who play them, otherwise nobody would even NOTICE
I'm currently working on a NWN2 mod, and the NWN community is pretty big, I can tell you that.

Yeah, srsly though, Its a shame that they shut down some extremely good multiplayer games. I guess its good we got things like hamachi and tungle. good thing those game have LAN support. What are we gonna do when companies shut down services for games that don't have LAN support? Like most newer MP games. Guess were screwed unless someone can emulate the service for those games.

 

[vxicepickxv]

Gamespy has always been garbage but this seems like a step in a suicidal direction. Now they are not only providing a poorly done service, but they are now canceling services and alienating devs and players alike which will cost them more business in the future as better services are everywhere(I can't imagine there actually being a service worse than the one gamespy delivers that actually charges money).

I remember two of them. TEN and Kali.net were both subscription services in the day of dial up. You would directly call the server, and it would emulate a LAN for you. TEN was well 10 bucks and Kali.net was 20. Per month.

It sounds as terrible as it was.

 

[barbzilla]

How much does it cost to run servers?

I remember seeing a dev video for Guild Wars 2 prior to its release where they stated that running a server these days is actually fairly inexpensive (hence part of why the GW2 business model works). Assuming that this is true, I can still totally understand the business logic of shutting down a service they were providing at a cost to themselves, but I don't see a need for them to be dicks about it with the quote from Rebellion, "We have been informed that in order to do so would cost us tens of thousands of pounds a year - far in excess of how much we were paying previously." I'd rather they had just been honest about simply wanting to get out of the business of hosting servers.

Another interesting note there, "paying previously". So companies were STILL paying Gamespy to host servers for old games?

It would also be interesting to see if Gamespy told the makers of these games that they were shutting down the servers beforehand. The implication here being that if the company had enough advance warning the onus will have been on them to set up their own servers/service. On the other hand, if there wasn't enough advance warning then it sounds almost like blackmail.

Running servers isn't horribly expensive now a day, this is just Gamespy kidnapping the multiplayer aspect of these Dev's games and holding it for ransom. I am not 100% sure about the legality of this (it depends on any agreements signed, and the amount of notice they were given to find an alternative), but if nothing else it is horribly un-ethical. They are fairly well setting themselves up for failure on the PC market. My guess is that they are moving Gamespy into the mobile world and giving up on PC (it isn't like they were horribly popular among the PC crowd to start with). Even so, the Dev's were paying for the server space they were using (most likely based on the number of user's they received per month), and as such if they were not given proper notice to find an alternative they are unlikely to be trusted in the future by other game companies. Not to mention the gamers they are alienating. We are an outspoken crowd that holds no issues with forsaking a company that burns us.

The other major issue being that there wasn't any notice to the gamers either (leading me to believe this was a spur of the moment decision). I went to their facebook page and their forums and was greeted by swarms of angry gamers demanding information ( I can see another class action lawsuit in someone's future), so I don't see the PC crowd trusting them any time soon.

 

[mooncalf]

Nothing lasts forever, and we all know hearts can change. And things get stalled in this biz, so it's cold december rain.

 

[Gather]

Sadly NWN2 and NWN1 PW's will slowly fade into obscurity without a list of available servers for new players to join those persistent world.

May you die slowly so people can enjoy you to the fullest.

 

[snekadid]

Gamespy has always been garbage but this seems like a step in a suicidal direction. Now they are not only providing a poorly done service, but they are now canceling services and alienating devs and players alike which will cost them more business in the future as better services are everywhere(I can't imagine there actually being a service worse than the one gamespy delivers that actually charges money).

I remember two of them. TEN and Kali.net were both subscription services in the day of dial up. You would directly call the server, and it would emulate a LAN for you. TEN was well 10 bucks and Kali.net was 20. Per month.

It sounds as terrible as it was.

Those were terrible services XD but I was referring to modern services and dial-up is a lie, it NEVER EXISTED!