The game publisher that gamers love to hate has updated its blog with depressing news that gamers won’t be able to play over 50 EA games with their friends from the 30th of June, 2014.
That’s because those games use GameSpy’s services to create and host multiplayer sessions, and GameSpy’s servers are being taken offline – permanently – on that day.
Gamespy was a third-party online service used by many developers to host their games’ multiplayer portions. It was acquired by GLU in 2012, and many developers have spent the past two years transitioning their games to other services to keep them available to their respective communities as Gamespy has been winding down.
The games EA will be shutting down include titles we didn’t expect to see like Crysis 2, Command & Conquer 3 and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2, but the official EA blog says that all affected games were chosen because peak numbers have dwindled to a point where it doesn’t make sense to keep up with the behind-the-scenes operations needed to keep them online.
The post says “We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99% of customers playing our more popular games.”
If you see your favourite game on the list, don’t fret right away as many communities have made other plans to keep their games accessible. For instance, Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 & 3, Generals, Master of Orion 3, Star Wars: Battlefront II and the first Neverwinter Nights have moved over to another service called GameRanger, so you might want to do some investigating first before throwing your hands up in despair.
For a full list of the affected games, head over to EA’s official blog post.
[Source: The official EA blog, Image: EA.com]
