EA on GameSpy: Investigating Community-Supported Options

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EA is looking into preserving the old favorites.

As reported back in April, GameSpy said that it would begin shutting down its master servers for multiplayer games on May 31. Parent company Glu Mobile revealed that it has around 800 developers and publishers who use the GameSpy service. Some of the more recent titles affected by the closure include Dungeon Defenders on all platforms, Gotham City Impostors and Red Dead Redemption.

Electronic Arts gave an update of its own, saying that its teams have been working to evaluate the options to keep multiplayer services up and running. The bad news is that EA does not have a solution at this time. The good news is that the GameSpy platform will be closed down at the end of June. That's an extra month of play, right?

"We know some of these games are still fan favorites, including Battlefield 2, Battlefield 1942, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Command & Conquer games," the company writes in an update. "We are still investigating community-supported options to preserve online functionality for these titles, such as multiplayer. Significant technical hurdles remain, and at this time we don't have anything to announce."

A list of games set to be taken offline due to GameSpy shutting down can be found here. These include Bulletstorm for the PS3, Crysis and Crysis 2 for the PC, a number of FIFA Soccer titles for the Nintendo DS, Neverwinter Nights 2 for the PC and Mac, Neverwinter Nights for PC, Mac and Linux, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 for PC, and a huge number of others.

"The decisions to retire older EA games are never easy," the company writes. "The development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them and it is hard to see one retired."

The company points out that games get replaced by newer versions, and the number of gamers playing on the older titles begins to dwindle anyway. Eventually, it becomes a matter of expense; there's no sense in shelling out money for maintaining games that really aren't played any longer.

Kevin Parrish
13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • LandoVash
    Forgive me for possibly not understanding the implication behind the GameSpy shutdown, but does this mean you can no longer host a multiplayer game on these titles between friends say on Origin or Steam not using GameSpy? (Can not say I ever used the GameSpy service)
    Reply
  • Zepid
    Forgive me for possibly not understanding the implication behind the GameSpy shutdown, but does this mean you can no longer host a multiplayer game on these titles between friends say on Origin or Steam not using GameSpy? (Can not say I ever used the GameSpy service)

    Gamespy was the service that hosted thousands of titles for multiple studios/publishers - not just EA.

    Examples of such popular games would include Battlefield 2 and Battlefront 2, which you can no longer play until some other service decides to pick them up.
    Reply
  • ya right
    junkspy should not have been coded INTO the games, as such anyone coding services INTO a game is a fkn glu bag!

    Quit making junk ware EA!
    Reply
  • ya right
    junkspy should not have been coded INTO the games, as such anyone coding services INTO a game is a fkn glu bag!

    Quit making junk ware EA!
    Reply
  • memadmax
    Here's the thing.
    Yes, these games are old, but that helps in keeping them alive.
    Since there isn't really that many people playing these games(last time I was on MOHAA there was only like 20 people there lol), why not just take the server, virtualize it, and have it live on a server that is doing other things.
    Reply
  • coolitic
    Yeah, but each of the Crysis games are nothing like each other, so it's not like there are new versions to it.

    I know the awesome gameplay of Crysis Wars was replaced probably to prevent competition with Battlefield series, but there could have been other solutions to that.
    Reply
  • jasonelmore
    i'm really gonna miss crysis wars. It was like the "battlefield 3" years before battlefield 3 came out. So many good memories of that game.
    Reply
  • Azt3ck
    You really want to fix this problem Game Devs. Let people run there own servers. That is when gaming was fun. You were able to have your own server to mod, kick players and set your server for a clan war. I've been to LANParties and games we were supposed to play we couldn't cause server was down for maintenance. Really? If we could host our own servers again we wouldn't have this problem.
    Reply
  • Darkk
    Here is my take on this. EA already made their money on the initial titles and no longer make business sense to keep the old game going under the current platform. So open source it and let the community take over. This way older players like me still can enjoy the old games with some interesting mods and twists without the burden on EA so they can focus on developing new games.

    Games like Unreal Tournament III and Counterstrike are good examples. Both are great games and still fun to play with online players even tho the publisher no longer maintains it. Over the years they came up with some interesting mods and boards that just keeps me want to play it even more.
    Reply
  • chicofehr
    How many of these games support LAN. A few computes and some real friends and it would still work fine. I only do LAN so I never used any of these online services anyway. I think they should give the fans of the old games the source code so they can add the ability to use any server they want. There are many good programmers who will do it for the love of their game.
    Reply