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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."
Lame move. Basically, they don't want to continue to update their SDK for the Mac platform. Either it's costing them more, so they've increased licensing fees, OR, they don't want to bother with it any more.
Anyone know the before and after cost of the SDK license?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Only Mortal is a fine enough server browser for most Mac games, and GameRanger is still available if I remember right.
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?
This is a nice example why vendor lock-in and closed source _can_ be bad for business.
Lucky bastards. I wish they would drop the PC support too.
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.
What with Mac these days being a Unix workalike, and with Linux being a Unix workalike, then isn't support for Mac almost the same as support for Linux? AND with Linux beginning to take desktop space away from Windows, a move away from Mac/Linux becomes the same as restricting oneself to a shrinking market share! (Of course, if some fundamental misunderstanding was written into the preceding, I'm sure someone will let me know, heh.)
It's their loss. Mac gamers are just going to have to do what everyone who gets fed up with Gamespy does and switch to another server browser. Maybe they'll like it more or maybe they wont, but Gamespy had better hope that the Mac doesn't gain any ground as a gaming platform because then they would have to try and regain ground with a whole community of pissed of gamers who are wondering why they were dumped in the first place.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
Right now there are more games I can think of that are MPOGs then are not on the mac side, including just about ever FPS out there minus Counterstrike. A statement like this can only come from someone who has no knowlage of the Macintosh platform... for one thing how do you know those Battle.NET people ARNT mac users.... Mac and PC users run on the same system (I know, I played Starcraft and DiabloII all the time with my friend who runs a PC) and Starcraft has a OSX client as does DiabloII.
Im sorry but your statment stinks of the same mentality of people who continue to keep the Mac down as a viable platform for gaming. A person who grew up on windows, only used windows and has no clue of the advantages to running a mac system, a linux system or the fact that all computers when the programmer knows what they are doing can run the same program with minimal effort done in changing the code, something Blizzard has done from day one, and still something that most PC heads cant grasp because they cant see past their own blinded shortsidedness.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Don't forget that America's Army also uses GameSpy. I would hate to not be able to frag my Mac-loving friends anymore.
Of course, long term, a software house looking to produce a game for both PCs and Macs long term will choose an agnostic server browser, or host their own, so GameSpy, ultimately, is going to lose with this move.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'm not into (online) gaming much, so forgive me, if I understood something wrong.
AFAIU GameSpy is a tool that helps you to locate other players that want to play the same game online. So, if they drop the support for my OS or fuck up things in other ways, I'll quit using it and search for companions/opponents somewhere else and with another tool or no tool at all.
So, what's the big fuzz around this?
Kosi
If you're going to try and pick a game that is available to lots of PC players but not to Mac players, you could have done a lot better than to mention a Blizzard product - since Starcraft, Diablo, Warcraft III and World of Warcraft are all still available for PC & Mac and play on the same servers.
I can jump on Battle Net and get my Starcraft fix in any time of the week and there are always lots of games (although more eastern hemisphere guys are on when it's after midnight in the states)--and that game is almost seven years old! This is because there are lots of people who like to play. Compare that to a Mac game that might sell a few hundred thousand units. The numbers just aren't there.
You DO realize Starcraft (and all Blizzard games) is available for the Mac, right? You could be playing against Mac gamers every time you log on to battle.net, for all you know.
Shortsidedness is the quality of a golf shot that misses the green near the flag, resulting in a more difficult chip. To hit such a shot is to shortside onesself.
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 )
I won't challenge you on which machine is better, PC or Mac. I will state a fact though. Gamespy is dumping Macs because it costs them more money than they make supporting them. The install base simply does not exist to support the continuation of Mac gaming under the gamespy umbrella. Again I am not bashing the Macs at all. It simply has come down to a dollars issue.
I will however take a moment to bash some of the Mac users though. They whine about not being able to play a specific game on their Macs all of the time. That, to me, is like buying an xbox and complaining that you can't play nintendo games on them. Well perhaps you should consider buying the platform that the software exists on if that's what you want to do, rather than buy the wrong thing and p1ss and whine and moan about no one writing games for the mac. The Mac is a great machine, it's just not for mainline games.
That assumes that the Mac platform was ever appealing to gamers.
Don't get me wrong, I use my Macs every day. One runs my music studio, another is about to become my new web server, and my iBook goes with me everywhere gets used for just about every other computing task that I do.
But when I want to play games, I do so on either a Windows PC or a console. I'm all about using the right tool for the job.
Yes, I could play World of Warcraft on the eMac I use for recording music, but why bother when an el-cheapo PC with a decent video card, which I can keep anywhere in the house, does the job just fine?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
but Linux seems to be taking off worldwide
Five Years Ago called. They want their hype back.
Widespread use of Linux on the home user's desktop was a pipedream which precious few believe anymore.
* PCGamesInc releases "PC Wars Ultimate Mega Online!", for PC and consoles.
* MacSoft, or some other third party, then buys the rights to do a Mac port. They, not PCGamesInc, pay oodles of cash to developers to do the work, and eat the loss if the game doesn't sell.
* PCGamesInc then profits, without any work on their part (except for the lawyer signing the rights.)
Now, tell me again why software houses would even care about the number of Mac gamers as long as they know that there are enough that, as long as they don't make the game too PC centric (say, by chosing a server browser technology that's actively hostile to Macs in favour of something agnostic that's just as good and reasonably priced), they'll get cash from someone wanting to do a Mac port?
Personally, if I was running a software house, I'd care. It's money. I'm not upsetting anyone by keeping my options open, and I'm opening the door to raking in more cash in future without any extra expenditure today.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You know, I remember that Warcraft II for the Mac had built in TCP/IP play, allowing me to go on IRC and get trounced without having to pay for some hack like Kali that routed IPX traffic over TCP, like the inferior PC version required. Blizzard has always had excellent support for the Mac, and its employees whom I have met at developer conferences were all great guys. However, enough talking, I need to get back to leveling up my World of Warcraft character using this nice PowerMac G5 of mine...
If GameSpy puts themselves out of reach for companies, companies will simply adopt another solution. GameSpy's loss, because this might cause companies to switch to another solution on both Mac and PC platforms to have a unified interface between their two software versions. Yes, it would require coding work to swap out Gamespy for another solution, but I'm sure some enterprising company will come up with a solution that is very similar to Gamespy in it's programming interfaces.
Listen, if you are really interested in gaming, you get a Windows PC. If you have things that are more important than gaming for your home computer, then choose based off that. Just know that YOU ARE GOING TO BE SCREWED WHEN IT COMES TO GAMES. If you don't understand this going in, well, that is your fault. I have no doubt that the market for gaming on Macs is growing...if it were shrinking, it would be non-existant. Ok, that's not really a fair statement to make, I remember the bitter feeling as a kid that I couldn't play the games my friends could on a PC. The market for gaming on Macs is much much much smaller than on PC....on Linux, it is even less. If a company chooses to not support other OS's than Windows, that is their choice. You may not like it, but as I mentioned earlier, it shouldn't come as a surprise. There aren't a bunch of PC users conspiring to keep Mac gamers down, as you would like to think. It is a simple business decision. If the effort and cost do something is > than the profit you get back, you don't do it. If Mac gaming was a cash cow, then you would see people scrambling to port to the Mac. This is not the reality. It is great that more companies are supporting Macs, if you are crying now, it was much much worse 10 years ago. The only thing that will make people take Macs and Linux more seriously (in gaming) are when they gain more of the marketshare from Windows. Until then though, if the main reason you have your PC is for games...then don't get a Mac. There is no conspiracy, only business.
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The gamespy interface in games is weak and lame and devoid of basic features. And half the time, the filter features don't even work in the released game! I've bought a couple games in the last year where filters had no effect at all and another game where I have yet to see a single game server pop up in 9 months, with all filters off (no connection to master server).
If they want to be the defacto game search interface for the industry, they need to get off their lazy butts and do it right. And while Macs aren't raking in the market share, they are part of the market, DEAL WITH IT! It's not like GameSpy code is rocket science anyways. Yet they STILL manage to hose it often enough.
I wouldn't be surprised if the core of the problem is that 'the' Mac guy at GameSpy got sick of doing the same amount of work that 15 people do for the PC version and quit.
This sounds like a geniune market opportunity for someone to come into the market and develop a nice cross platform (win/osx/X11) interface and service for games.
Make one app and keep improving and supporting it - instead of the GameSpy approach of making one, raking in fees from suckers (like me) and then dumping it for a new product which is basically the same only web based and slow and buggy and trying to charge your lifetime customers for it.
If GameSpy actually had the PC side of their stuff working well, it might be a lost cause, but they can't even get their core market right, so screw em. Time for some better company to squish them....
Actually, that's exactly what will happen on the Mac side when Gamespy pulls their support.
It's kind of like how MacOS users used to get onto Kazaa and Audiogalaxy. Someone would write a piece of software (your "another tool") that would talk to their servers, then the servers would be modified and you'd lose your connection.
If Gamespy decides it doesn't want Mac users to connect to their servers anymore, then they'll cut the cord just like my example above. They are, in fact, doing just that with their new (many times larger) licensing fee.
We're sorry, the phone number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try your call again
You like open source (or semi... APSL) and cross-platform?
OpenPlay is a start. Been around a while, but I don't know of any net games that use it. The mailing list seems to still be active, but I'm not a member, so I can't tell you what they're really up to.
Most of these comments are talking about how the end-users are suffering from GameSpy - it's really the developers. If I wrote an app and licensed GameSpy because they had a cross-platform SDK, I'd be pissed if they then told me that one of those platforms would cost extra. f00kers. Until there's a real viable (read: probably not OpenPlay yet) x-platform SDK for net play and discovering opponents, this kind of crap is going to go on and on and on and on...
Don't ask me. I don't know.
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.
Brad Oliver of Aspyr Media that (among others) does mac ports of popular titles has commented on the issue in the Inside Mac Games forums, right here: http://www.insidemacgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php? p=192796&highlight=#192796
"I own both a Dual 1.8 G5"
and... a toaster?
As a matter of fact, I consider the Mac a viable gaming platform, and I do all of my hardcore gaming on it. I have a GameCube for a few pickups, but most of my time is spent gaming on my Mac. And yes, I'm quite serious.
You talk the way you do because you're in the majority. Were fortune to change, you'd feel the way we do.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
But what do sales figures mean to the gaming market? I work for a government organisation that probably has around 200 000 PCs and maybe a dozen Macs. I can guarantee you not one of those PCs is used for online gaming.
THIS is where PCs make the good sales: governments and corporations, and neither of those outfits are into gaming.
Hasn't been a decent game since Unreal Tournament anyway...
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
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.
Actually many highly competent developers write great code that is completely non-portable. It's called Direct-X which is in no way shape or form portable to another platform (without reimplementing the entire API on the target platform).
It has zero to do with programmer competency and everything to do with API choices. If your game is programmatically tied to Windows, odds are it will not be ported.
Personally I think this is a stupid move by developers, but that's just me.
.technomancer