“Effective May 31, 2014, GameSpy will cease providing all hosted services for all games still using GameSpy.
If you have any questions about how this impacts your favorite title please contact the game’s publisher for more information.
Thanks for a great ride!”
Not sure about you guys, but a lot of games I played this generation(and last) used Gamespy, and it’s looking like most of those games are going to get GGPO’d. Literally.
Such good memories. I actively used Gamespy a lot in the early 2000’s to play a lot of quality FPS games of that era, and to this day they were a part of a lot of the MP games I played in some way with their matchmaking service that so many publishers and developers licensed throughout the years.
My most played game over the weekends is Mortal Kombat. I’ve been trying to get back in to SSFIV, but it’s just not clicking for me in terms of excitement. Damn.
Welp, looks like I have to create a petition to convince Activision to work around this. Probably an HD re-release on console, because they never put netplay with the PC port of THPS HD.
[details=Spoiler]
***Company Statements
***Activision: “Activision won’t be affected.” (Source)
Bohemia Interactive: “We are planning to introduce an alternative solution using Steam to Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead and Arma 3 users. Other games… will have [a] more limited multiplayer experience with loss of server browser… That said, direct IP connection to servers should work even after Gamespy services are no longer available.” (Source)
Capcom: “There are a few titles for which Capcom utilizes GameSpy’s matchmaking services for online gameplay. We are evaluating migration solutions and will have more information in the near future” (Source)
Epic: "“We’re spinning [up an in-house solution] next week and we don’t foresee any impact.” (Source)
Affected
Arma (Source)
Arma: Cold War Assault (Source)
Arma 2 (Source)
Arma 2: Free (Source)
Borderlands
Dungeon Defenders [PS3/Non-Steam] (Source)
Halo: Combat Evolved
Saints Row 2 (Source)
Star Wars Battlefront
Star Wars Battlefront 2
Stronghold 2 (Source)
Stronghold Legends (Source)
Take On Helicopters (Source)
Status Unknown
Alien vs Predator 2
Battlefield 1942
Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2142
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Battlefield Vietnam
Call of Juarez
Call of Juarez Bound in Blood
Civilization III
Civilization IV
Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
Commandos: Behind the Call of Duty
Crysis
Crysis Warhead
Crysis Wars
Far Cry
Jagged Alliance 2
Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Medieval Total War
Medieval Total War 2
Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit
Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
Postal 2
Red Dead Redemption
Shogun Total War
SWAT 4
Titan Quest
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Tom Clancy’s HAWX
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent
Two Worlds
Two Worlds 2
Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War
Warhammer 40K: Dark Crusade
Warhammer 40K: Soulstorm
Warhammer 40K: Winter Assault
Probably Unaffected
Alien vs Predator (Classic) (Source)
Call of Duty (Source)
Call of Duty United Offense (Source)
Call of Duty 2 (Source)
Commandos 2 (Source)
Commandos 3 (Source)
Jagged Alliance (Source)
Hexen (Source)
Hexen 2 (Source)
Quake 2 (Source)
Quake 3 (Source)
Quake 4 (Source)
Soldier of Fortune (Source)
Soldier of Fortune 2 (Source)
SWAT 2 (Source)
SWAT 3 (Source)
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Gold
Unreal 2
***Unaffected
***Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead (Source)
Arma 3 (Source)
Company of Heroes (Source)
Multiwinia (Source)
Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike Online Edition (Source)
Stronghold HD (Source)
Stronghold Crusader HD ((Source)[/details]
That is why I prefer a more open architecture and don’t ever want to pay for these types of services. If they need money monthly to keep their doors open eventually the game is going to go. If it has P2P/H2H options then there really isn’t that worry. Although admittedly the games likely die long before it’s a worry.
Gamespy was free to use. Thing is, their matchmaking engine was so good, big publishers and developers would license it and use it in their games. The games that were powered by GS were 99.9% F2P online.
Games that used this matchmaking backend by Gamespy are mostly not going to work anymore, because GS’s servers that would help put people together are shutting down.
Some developers/publishers are already addressing this and making it so GS isn’t needed for their games to be played online.
As for StarCraft, yeah, you can still play it online. I agree with your other point though, in that I’m not very interested in investing into a next-gen console because of the online paywalls & the fact that the servers all get killed off anyway whether you pay for them or not.
