GameSpy Multiplayer Shutting Down, Affecting Hundreds of Games

An anonymous reader writes "For over a decade, GameSpy has provided and hosted multiplayer services for a variety of video games. GameSpy was purchased in 2012, and there were some worrying shutdowns of older servers, which disabled multiplayer capabilities for a number of games. Now, the whole service is going offline on May 31. Some publishers are scrambling to move to other platforms, while others are simply giving up on those games. Nintendo's recent abandonment of Wi-Fi games was a result of their reliance on GameSpy's servers. Bohemia Interactive, developers of the Arma series, said the GameSpy closure will affect matchmaking and CD-key authentication."

Comments

The Cloud!

[glasshole]

No matter who it is, how long it has been around, or what the service is... if it is a cloud service it will one day go away.

Re:The Cloud!

[rhsanborn]

We're hitting the age where some earlier services are starting to shut down, and that's actually a good thing. It will start a conversation about how much we're willing to trust to "the cloud" and what we're willing to make temporary. Many of us have Kindles, iPhones, Rokus that use content from providers not unlike GameSpy. We need to be willing to say out loud that ownership of these items is now temporary. The sellers of these items need to be more open about that as well.

Re:The Cloud!

[ledow]

You can replace "cloud service" with "service".

Just about any business, service, or product you use you have to consider what happens if the company goes bankrupt. "But they'll never go bankrupt" is not an answer. You need to know what you'll do if they just go offline, now, today, and you never get your data back ever.

If you haven't been working like that in your business since day one, you really need to consider your options. Whether it's a mobile phone provider, some VoIP service, your operating system vendor, your cloud services or - hell - your cleaners, your electrician or anything else, you owe it to yourself and your customers to have enough information to just carry on. Maybe with a blip. Maybe not 100% smooth and instant. But at least for business continuity purposes.

Cloud is no different in this regard. I know of a bursar at a private school who questioned even things like in-house library services, window-cleaning companies (with long-term contracts) and IT support contracts on the basis of "What if you go bankrupt today?" It's a sensible question to ask - of them and of yourself - and vital for business continuity in anything the smaller of outfits.

They will not tell you if they are going bankrupt until it's too late. Hell, we had an AV vendor go into administration. They didn't say a word and we only found out when it had been a while since our last signature update and went to their website.

Re:The Cloud!

[Enry]

This is different for a few reasons.

When you buy music from iTunes, Amazon, or Google Play you can download the content and store it locally without DRM.
Kindle content can also be downloaded and saved separately but does require that the device is already authorized.
In the case of e.g. Netflix, you never own the content, merely use of the content they provide for the time they have it.

In the case of GameSpy, it's required to play online. It'd be like Steam or XBox Live being shut down.

Re:The Cloud!

[glasshole]

I think these cloud services are a little different. You probably physically purchased games that are now unplayable because they don't have servers to connect to. Similarly if you bought a Chromebook and Google discontinued the Docs service you'd have purchased a very pretty brick.

Re:The Cloud!

[SuricouRaven]

That's the problem with clouds. Eventually, they rain.

Re:The Cloud!

[Desler]

No. If you download iTunes songs they have DRM unless you pay extra for the "iTunes Plus" service which makes each song more expensive

Songs on iTunes haven't had DRM since 2009.

GameRanger already supports many GameSpy games

[Scott Kevill]

I'm the developer of GameRanger, a PC/Mac multiplayer online gaming service supporting over 600 games that has been running since 1999. Not very well known due to being Mac-only until late 2008, but just hit 5 million registered members last month mostly from word of mouth. Many of these games are ex-GameSpy or already had their existing services shut down long ago.

I've been trying to reach out to any affected developers and publishers, as I'm well-positioned to be able to help out. My only interest is in keeping these games alive, no matter how small the player base is. I'm not sure if I can help with the console games; that may depend on Glu (I've reached out to them as well).

Why do companies buy then shutdown something

[Jombieman]

I don't get why a company gets bought out, then shortly afterwards gets shut down. Often the one thing that gives the company value is what gets shut down. Are the purchasing companies not aware that their purchase isn't of value after the fact?

Re:Why do companies buy then shutdown something

[Anrego]

Three big ones:

1) kill the competition
2) assets (physical, people, and lately the big one: patents/other IP)
3) seemed like a good idea but quickly proves to be way less profitable than expected (will probably be the case when Dice eventually sells or kills slashdot).