GameSpy has been connecting PC players to one another online for more than a decade, acting as a multiplayer matching service for hundreds of titles. It's going offline at the end of May, leaving questions about the fates of several games that still use the service.
Fortunately, answers have been provided regarding some of the bigger titles in question. Borderlands, Civilization III and Civilization IV are currently operating with GameSpy, but will switch to Steamworks when GameSpy is shuttered for good.
2K Games, the publisher behind those titles, announced the games would see a temporary online service loss until the transition to Steamworks is completed. Offline functionality will of course not be affected during the process.
GameSpy is middleware that publishers and developers can use to host online games, something around 800 different studios have done since its debut in 1996. It was acquired by IGN in 2000, whose new owner Ziff Davis decided last year to shut down all secondary sites such as GameSpy.
The future of some titles is still up in the air, while others will be seeing the end of their online components. Games like Star Wars Battlefront 2 had a home on GameSpy, but without the backing of a publisher, nobody is likely to secure its future. 2K has provided a list of games that it will not be transferring to Steamworks, meaning their online functionality will be shut down permanently on May 31. The list of games losing their online services includes several 2K Sports and Vietcong titles.
