GameSpy Multiplayer Shutting Down, Affecting Hundreds of Games

[wraggster]

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 (http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/12/07/2250252/gamespys-new-owners-begin-disabling-multiplayer-without-warning) of older servers, which disabled multiplayer capabilities for a number of games. Now, the whole service is going offline on May 31 (http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/03/gamespy-multiplayer-shutting-down-hundreds-of-games-at-risk). 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 (http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/02/27/nintendo-terminating-wi-fi-service-for-ds-and-wii) was a result of their reliance on GameSpy's servers. Bohemia Interactive, developers of the Arma series, said the GameSpy closure will affectmatchmaking and CD-key authentication (http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?175463-End-of-Gamespy&p=2656964&viewfull=1#post2656964).

http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/04/04/1254242/gamespy-multiplayer-shutting-down-affecting-hundreds-of-games