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EA Shuts Down Fan-Run Servers For Older Battlefield Games (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since 2014, a group of volunteers going by the name Revive Network have been working to keep online game servers running for Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, and Battlefield Heroes. As of this week, the team is shutting down that effort thanks to a legal request from publisher Electronic Arts. "We will get right to the point: Electronic Arts Inc.' legal team has contacted us and nicely asked us to stop distributing and using their intellectual property," the Revive Network team writes in a note on their site. "As diehard fans of the franchise, we will respect these stipulations."
EA's older Battlefield titles were a victim of the 2014 GameSpy shutdown, which disabled the online infrastructure for plenty of classic PC and console games. To get around that, Revive was distributing modified versions of the older Battlefield titles along with a launcher that allowed access to its own, rewritten server infrastructure. The process started with Battlefield 2 in 2014 and expanded to Battlefield 2142 last year, and Battlefield Heroes a few month ago. It's the distribution of modified copies of these now-defunct games that seems to have drawn the ire of EA's legal department. Revive claimed over 900,000 registered accounts across its games, including nearly 175,000 players for the recently revived Battlefield Heroes.
EA's older Battlefield titles were a victim of the 2014 GameSpy shutdown, which disabled the online infrastructure for plenty of classic PC and console games. To get around that, Revive was distributing modified versions of the older Battlefield titles along with a launcher that allowed access to its own, rewritten server infrastructure. The process started with Battlefield 2 in 2014 and expanded to Battlefield 2142 last year, and Battlefield Heroes a few month ago. It's the distribution of modified copies of these now-defunct games that seems to have drawn the ire of EA's legal department. Revive claimed over 900,000 registered accounts across its games, including nearly 175,000 players for the recently revived Battlefield Heroes.
"As diehard fans of the franchise, we will respect these stipulations."
More like die easy.
EAt shit and die.
Battlefield 1942 was the bomb. Best Battlefield ever. They lost their way when they started trying to be realistic rather than fun.
Epic Assholes. What else would you expect?
Intellectual property especially, Good times were had and now EA is going to go ruin it, because "muy property."
Let's shut down butt fucking
If there are that many people who still want to play those games on line, EA should reactivate their own servers, let them play the game and charge a fair price for the service. Almost pure profit, as they should already have all of the infrastructure including the software.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Instead of distributing patches of their own design, they were distributing modified files that were under copyright by EA.
Twinstiq, game news
My game stopped working. I* fixed it. As should be my right.
*Or I had the mechanic of my choice perform the repair. For myself and all the other people who own this product.
Keep all this EA ass-hattery in mind as you purchase vehicles and other products. For which manufacturers maintain the right to not only withhold support, but remotely disable when they feel end of life has been reached. [This fulfills my obligatory bad car analogy quota for the week.]
Have gnu, will travel.
I really liked BF 2142 because game play was very fun, and there was not any graphic gore / the killing was almost more like tagging.
What alternatives exist today that have fun team play but aren't about realism?
BF2Hub client still seems to work for Battlefield 2.
It might be hard to find a CPU and chipset that don't require air cooling. Maybe Peltier modules?
I never trust a game that depends on somebody else's server being accessible. This is another piece of evidence as to why that is proper.
But "Electronic Arts", in particular, has several black marks against themselves in my book. Perhaps I just notice them more, but they seem worse than the average game maker.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
For every right there is an equal and opposite right.
Right to life. Right to murder. Sure you want to go with that argument?
I have two sons entering gaming age soon, I will make sure to teach them not to use your products. Let's see how far the word spreads. Hopefully the your fans who have been disconnected are not in a rush to buy from you again.
will right to repair laws? stop like this from happening??? as if not car manufacturer can use IP clams to shut down 3rd party stops and parts.
...Ruin Everything!
The copy right laws and more importantly the trade mark laws likely forced their hand. The battlefield games are trade marked to EA. They have to defend their trade mark to keep it. They could in theory license it to another entity but that still requires EA to maintain a level of control over Revive and how they use it. It's a pain to do it with another company that has its own legal department, accounting, QA etc. It would be impossible to do with a group of volunteers. I'm pretty sure EA let this slide for as long as possible.
how crappy they are. More suckers to be parted with their money.
no real reason to do this other than to be dicks
People made cool mods for those old battlefield games, that's gaming history they're bumping off the internet. And it's not about the money, it's a small number of people playing those old games compared to the modern playerbase playing stuff like pubg. No, this is just a bored lawyer trying to look busy, and doing what he can to serve Satan I imagine.
Eat a dick EA
Last year Moongamers was still running a 1942 server.
damaged by dogma
Worst case, what an amazing hiring opportunity squandered. Our team would empower evangelist like this. What a short sighted strategy. Companies, ours included, spend millions on developer kits and open API in an attempt to get third parties to engage with our technology. Why, oh, why would you shutdown a community that promotes your technology. Unless I'm missing something this seems like an opportunity that could create even more raving die hard fans. I understand the copyright issues, so why not create a license for these types of self driven teams... Unless they are harming the "brand", EA should get out of the way.
Meh, Kali still supports Duke Nukem. I'm good.
EA's upset that these guys are illegally distributing the binaries. Why not distribute a tool that patches the binaries? Wouldn't this be legal?
That is eternal shall not die, and in strange aeons, games may revive
People has said that the games are EA's intellectual property and they have the right to control them. But what about the intellectual property rights of people who bought the game, and had it turned into useless slabs of polycarbonate or collections of digital bits by EA's decision to shut down the servers? EA is stealing THEIR intellectual property by refusing to allow alternate servers to continue operation.
the car companies are fighting R2R laws tooth and nail. I'm not sure I want to add the software industry to that list.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Used to be somewhat of a hardcore gamer.
I find it interesting how, in hindsight, I pretty much quit gaming cold-turkey when "being online" became a requirement.
I still make an exception every couple of years when a new installment of the GTA franchise comes along - while I enjoy the single-player storyline, I never spend any time in the online area. I tried in the past, but quickly came to the conclusion that it's entirely a waste of time.