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."

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:The Cloud!

[praxis]

I got bitten when I tried to watch a movie I had purchased from Amazon in my hotel room in Canada. They were at least nice and allowed me to refund all of my digital purchases, which I did.