GameSpy is Shutting Down?!?

In the early days of multiplayer gaming you had one option if you wanted to play with friends and that was to pack up your PC and physically join them at a single location.  This is what started the LAN Party movement.  Given that most people still had dial up Internet the LAN situation wasn't all that bad.

Some games like Duke Nukem 3D and Warcraft had a online service called Kali to setup matchmaking but, it was a paid service and didn't work all that well.  Around the same time a new company spawned and would forever change the landscape of Online Multiplayer gaming and that company was GameSpy.

Sadly, it would seem that services like Steam and Origin have stifled the GameSpy service model and they are being forced to close down all their services.

Why is this closure happening, then? It's a business thing, and like most business things it's not easy to explain or understand unless you spend all day crunching numbers and paying bills. Which I don't. So here's the simple version that even I can comprehend: Ziff Davis wants to run an efficient, focused company, and managing several different sites that all cover videogames isn't exactly the model of efficiency. Even though GameSpy had its own unique voice that was separate and distinct from those of our sister sites, and there has always been value in that, it's hard to argue with that logic. Even if it does totally suck.

Read into it what you want but, by the sounds of it the margins are too low and costs needed to be cut.  The question is, what does this do for games that use GameSpy for their online matchmaking?? 

Maybe a service like Steam will integrate the protocol or another company will buy the IP but until that happens it will be LAN party of nothing if you want your multiplayer Borderlands 1 fix.

Related Web URL: http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/122/1227460p1.html