GameSpy Multiplayer Shutting Down, Affecting Hundreds of Games 145
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."
Re:The Cloud! (Score:5, Informative)
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:morons! (Score:4, Informative)
And then they learned their lesson. They now run Good Old Games, 100% DRM free, and The Witcher (sequel something something) is the first AAA title to go DRM free on GOG.