EA on GameSpy: Investigating Community-Supported Options

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.