You all probably know GameSpy or at least the name. In short, it’s an antiquated piece of bytes that even in its prime, which is about a decade ago, was more or less a useless service to provide the Multiplayer service for more than one game in a cheap and easy fashion. Glu bought GameSpy form IGN last August for $2.7 million and now would be receiving the license fees and payments from those companies that use its service. Everything went fine until Glu suddenly decided to shut down its servers for games like Neverwinter nights, Sniper Elite and SWAT4. Rebellion, the men and women behind Sniper Elite, issued a statement in which they commented on the issue and expressed their surprise. Getting in touch with Glu they were told that unless they would accept on a higher fee, their game will not be receiving any GameSpy service.

‘A few weeks ago, the online multiplayer servers for Sniper Elite were suddenly switched off by Glu, the third-party service we had been paying to maintain them.

For the past seven years we have run these servers at a cost to ourselves so that fans of Sniper Elite could continue to play online for free.

This decision by Glu was not taken in consultation with us and was beyond our control.

We have been talking to them since to try and get the servers turned back on. We have been informed that in order to do so would cost us tens of thousands of pounds a year - far in excess of how much we were paying previously.’

Sadly for Sniper Elite fans, Steve Hart, Senior Manager of Rebellion went on to say that:

‘We also do not have the option to take the multiplayer to a different provider. Because the game relies on Glu and GameSpy’s middleware, the entire multiplayer aspect of the game would have to be redeveloped by us […]’

On their Facebook page, GameSpy has responded to the hails of quite a few disgruntled fans saying that the servers had been removed since the developing studios had no more interest in maintaining them. While it’s hard to say what’s really going on here, if you read between the lines of both companies, then it seems that a fee increase was envisioned by Glu which the studios refused and thus ‘showed no interest in maintaining a server’. But then again, that is pure speculation so don’t put you money on it.

GameSpy is a piece of snailcrap anyway so if this heralds its death - good riddance. Sadly, many games and fans thereof had to make us of it. It seems that once again the consumer ends up on the receiving side of the whole shebang.