Slashdot Mirror
GameSpy Attempting to Dump Mac Gamers
An anonymous reader writes "Inside Mac Games reports that GameSpy is trying to license its way out of supporting the Mac." From the article: "The impact of GameSpy's pricing tactics could be devastating to the Mac gaming market. A number of recent games on the Mac such as Battlefield 1942, Medal of Honor: Breakthrough, Neverwinter Nights, and others use GameSpy."
I remember really liking this company in the Quake1 days. The *world.com sites where great community sites. They were the source for mods, skins, console commands, quakemovies, etc.
Then they switched and became a really unappealing, money grubbing company. I even bought one of their for-life gamespy 3d licenses which they want me to upgrade. They switched to a for pay product and I don't think they put any money into the old one.
Use to be a great source as well for downloads, now it's waiting in line for a public ftp server. Why haven't they embraced torrents?
What happened at this company?
Yes, i know platforms range--ps2, xbox, gamecube, DS, cellular, etc. PC and Mac run on the same TCP protocol, just different internal programming (just like all platforms, after i think about it).,br>
If they are dropping supprot for a (fledging?) platform, then they might as well do it for Gamecube (Network adapter? whats that?), or even PS2, since it seems that it does not have the same online userbase as the xbox.
why isnt there a competitor to GameSpy? At least, one that is just as popular?
Thats not the point of the article. Some games depend on gamespy internally, and if they don't work out of the box now, then that makes the Mac platform even less appealing.
I own both a Dual 1.8 G5 and find the Mac to be a superior platform over Windows for everything I do in computing.....EXCEPT gaming. For that, I have my 3000+ homemade box.
As I get older, I dont game as much or as often. I expect there's a lot more like me in the same boat, they used to be hardcore gamers back in their 20's but I'm a lot more interested in producing and making videos and music these days.
Mac beats the PC hands down for that. ( for me )
In the PC world, hardcore gamers avoid Gamespy like the plague (and we don't bother to read its crappy ad-driven "content" online, either).
Apple can easily remedy the problem we're discussing by making a gaming browser part of OS X. No need to let a third party squat on what should be a seamless interchange between client and server, managed by the OS.
Years ago I played a MMO flight sim called "Warbirds" (It's still around I think, but it's a shadow of its former self). When they went from version 1 to version 2 (3D models), they didn't release the Mac version concurrently. Version 2 had its own troubles, but it was just gorgeous. The models were beautiful. However, we spent several months staying in the old V1 arenas because a significant number of our squadmates were Mac jockeys. It wasn't fair to leave them behind, so we tried to keep them involved.
I wonder if current clans with Mac members will try to do something similar to support them.