Some sad and disappointing news came our way very recently, as we learned that the once great and prosperous online service that is GameSpy, will be shutting down it’s servers soon, leaving hundreds of games at the risk of being unplayable, multiplayer wise. GameSpy came about in 1999, it has been a part of the gaming industry for 15 years and has made quite an impact, being the sole server service for many popular games, including borderlands and grand theft auto IV.
GameSpy announced their closure in February 2013 and have just announced the final date before their servers shut off. This coming May on the 31st, all GameSpy servers will be shut down. GameSpy is responsible for the multiplayer hosting aspect of over 1000 titles, from a wide variety of publishers. Sources have confirmed that the Rockstar games will be unaffected by this closure, as they are being branched out to new services. Activision will also be unaffected and there is a possibility that Bohemia interactive (who brought us the arma series) will remain unaffected as well, though that one is not confirmed.
It is not publicly known exactly why GameSpy is shutting down, other than business is obviously not booming. This was the statement from Gamespy:
This is a shock to the gaming industry to say the least. Even if you don’t think it’s such a big deal, you have to realize that GameSpy has been around hosting their service for 15 years and a lot of people rely on them to do so. Hopefully all of the remaining titles can find some kind of alternative so they can remain unaffected by the shutdown. What do you think about this shutdown? How does it affect you?
A list of all titles carried by GameSpy - as you can see the list goes all the way back to 2002.
