Codemasters Shuts Down GRID Online Multiplayer

crookedvulture writes "This is why gamers make such a fuss about being able to host their own dedicated servers. Codemasters has shut down the online multiplayer component of three-year-old racing game GRID because a third party declined to renew its contract to host PC and PlayStation 3 servers for the game. Folks with the Xbox 360 version will still be able to play online, but Codemasters doesn't offer much in the way of an apology for everyone else. Perhaps it's time for game publishers unwilling to release dedicated servers to be required to maintain their own multiplayer servers for a set number of years after a title's launch."

Even if they aren't taking offline...

[gubers33]

They are usually abandoned. I know in the case of Call of Duty, after a new release in the line comes out, exploits stop being patched in the predecessors. This happens in many other games as well the servers are left on, but are never patched or touched again.

Re:Well, that sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me ask a question then: What platform are their dedicated servers running on? Are you assuming it's the same platform as your client? That's not a valid assumption.

No, but it's not necessarily an unreasonable one.

What if the dedicated servers are running Linux

That's no big deal; Linux software can be run on a lot of platforms, OSX and Cygwin included, provided the source is also released.

or Mac OS or OS/2?

Just how likely would you say that is? Mac isn't beyond the realms of possibility but OS/2? Who still uses that in production environments?

What if they're designed for systems with no less than 24GB of RAM?

Then it was badly written and the source code might well be necessary.

Without facts you have no way to base your assertion that an end-user -can- run a dedicated server for this game. It might be impossible without significant change to the code.

Discussions tend to be pretty dull when all parties have all the facts; assumptions are nearly always needed at some point. In the absence of a statement from CM on releasing a dedicated server or the source we're stuck with a certain number of assumptions, valid and not.