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?
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.
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."
This is one of the things holding the America's Army Mac port back, the GameSpy license needed renewing but they are now asking WAY too much for it. And since the in-game browser is run off GameSpy it makes the game useless.
GameSpy was a great thing...8 years ago. Started by a Navy man that wanted a quick and easy way to find and connect to Quake servers, but it turned into a mega-corp somewhere and adopted many MS techniques of crush and conquer. FilePlanet use to be great for game downloads, but now I can't get anything even with a logon (I'm not paying them for that crap when there are many other download sites available).
This affects more then just Macs, it affects everything they touch. Soon you'll need to logon to read the news at planetquake.com or even need to PAY them to read the news.
People need to stop relying on GameSpy and show them we are not going to put up with their crap...unfortunately most people WILL put of with their crap because they are too lazy or narrow minded to find something else.
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
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.
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.
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
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.