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."

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!

[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!

[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.

Re:The Cloud!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, iTunes MP3's do NOT have DRM. Movie and TV shows are a different story, but the music is DRM free (by default, with no extra charge).

Re:Why do companies buy then shutdown something

[Anonymous Coward]

a) Always to eliminate competition
b) Some part of the company bought is losing money
c) Turns out the inhouse product is better and is replacing it (see A)

You know what I find terrible? That we allowed companies like Autodesk, Adobe, and Microsoft to monopolize certain software, that it causes a "use or die" scenario.
Autodesk should never have been allowed to purchase Maya after purchasing SoftImage XSI, as this allowed them to own 3 of 4 commercially used 3D modeling and animation programs out there.
Adobe should never have been allowed to purchase Macromedia, as this allowed them to eliminate one competitor and destroy the one good thing (flash) that Macromedia was known for. In hindsight, if Adobe didn't, Microsoft or Apple would have, and one of them owning Macromedia would have been worse. It was also a betrayal of getting SVG into browsers.
Microsoft Office, yes there are alternatives, but people still send Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files in emails with the assumption that the other person can read it.

So seeing this issue with Gamespy, or developers integrating a little too snuggly with Steam means that at some point down the road, these games are simply going to not work without being hacked/fan-patched, thus ruining any integrity the game has for multiplayer. If it had any to begin with. The Wii/DSi/DS games don't have an option to make them work short of playing them in an emulator and emulating the gamespy servers. This is something that Nintendo in theory could do themselves.

Before we allow companies to merge, we should be asking, what would happen if the company bought it only to shut it down. Not simply "is there more than one program that X company doesn't own that serves the same purpose?" Because that Autodesk thing really pisses off a lot of people inside the industry and out.

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).