Why GAMESPY Servers have been shutdown?

[FieroBull]

Hello fellows of SWBF, I ask you why lucasarts said that SWBF Game Servers have been shutdown?!
Making Gamespy servers costs money?
So if anyone knows why LucasArts shutdown Gamespy servers, please answer me.
IM LOST! 

[{TCE}Call-of-Duty]

Because when Disney bought out Lucasarts the didn't want to keep paying Gamespy to keep the BF1 servers up but now theirs Tunngle so we can play online again

[{PLA}gdh92]

There's some old threads about this but very few sure answers. I E-mailed Gamespy and have read around a bit and it sounds like LucasArts stopped paying for the servers a long time ago but Gamespy kept them until they were bought by another company when they switched off the servers for a lot of games at once.

The servers cost hardly anything but when I asked I was told that only the original publisher or developer of the game could ask for them.

In short - Servers take money and time to manage, LucasArts or Gamespy, depending which story is true, didn't want to keep them up.

[FieroBull]

Thanks, its fantastic to have active members in forum.

disney... 

tunngle 

SWBF 

PD: Sorry for the smileys

[tirpider]

Gamespy sold to Glu Mobile before Disney bought LucasArts. Glu is the one that wanted a HUGE fee to run the servers.

Disney did not hurt SWBF at all. Glu killed the master server.

I bear that in mind every time I see a poorly made flash game that wants money.

[Phobos]

Gamespy sold to Glu Mobile before Disney bought LucasArts. Glu is the one that wanted a HUGE fee to run the servers.

Disney did not hurt SWBF at all. Glu killed the master server.

I bear that in mind every time I see a poorly made flash game that wants money.

I'm not sure if it was all GLU or if LucasArts asked them to shut down the BF1 master servers because the contract for them had expired. The same will happen to BF2 servers eventually, but their community will be more prepared for it.

[RepComm]

Yes, money is the general thing people want..
It takes money to broadcast a server and have server information feed into it.
When the money reaches 0, servers go bye bye. Almost all MP games are like this, unless its actual direct connection or server dedicated (like they're actually playing on your RAM and hard drive, not semi dedicated server which SWBF has).
--
Really Gdh? That's awful nice of Gamespy.. Unless they were just lazy and didn't feel like hitting the off switch

[tirpider]

I seem to remember Glu offered to maintain the master servers, but at an unreasonable cost that was ridiculously more than what gamespy charged.

I think it's awful that LucasArts said they didn't want to pay it, but I don't blame them. If someone tried to extort a huge amount of money out of me for a project I did 8 years ago, I'd wish them luck and keep on truckin' myself.

Glu wanted too much. Sure, it's their equipment and time and they deserve to get paid. Greed makes a person ugly. It probably wasn't that though. I am betting they just wanted the rights to the protocol for their own games and were never interested in maintaining legacy master servers.

Gamespy wanted out of maintaining all that stuff. Why? I don't know. Moving on to better things? Hosting master servers yielded $0 in profits? Probably the last one. I have to wonder about them though, do they actually do anything anymore or did they just dissolve and merge the staff with the IGN folks? I wonder how many of them are still working full-time. (Fair winds, friends).

It's a nauseating trail of money, IP rights, greed, and disenfranchised users.

Then Disney bought LucasArts and it was announced that the trek-lens-flare-guy was going to do the next movie. (bye-bye canon, hello baby Solo toys)

It's like the people responsible for it all are a bunch of Hutts.

----
LucasArts did announce they were dropping support for SWBF1 well before the master servers went dark. I remember being surprised to find servers on the PC and PS2 after the announcement.

---

The lesson is to not invest too much time in a game that relies on proprietary protocols and master server type session handlers to handle MP over the internet. It just ends in tears when they pull the plug. (SWGalaxies.....)

[Unit 33]

(bye-bye canon, hello baby Solo toys)

[spoiler= I must scream][/spoiler]


Tirpider summarised it best, but I'll throw some more words around too.


... Because this was always going to happen. Why would they want to maintain the servers for an 8-or-so year old game which has the following of less than 100 regular players?
The people in charge are bean counters, to them it's all just numbers flying around, the communities needs barely register with them.


Yes it sounds cynical, but it's my inference.

[Anyder]

The same will happen to BF2 servers eventually, but their community will be more prepared for it.

Ive told many SWBF2 players, but not all (cause its impossibly), what happened to bf1 and what we're doing.
The BF2 Community's activivty cannot be compared to the swbf1.
There are many more (x10 or x15 or more) players and servers in BF2 than SWBF1 Had

[{PLA}gdh92]

Sorry to go off topic but is there a SWBF2 site like SWBFgamers? I know there's gametoast but that's mostly modding and doesn't seem to have tournaments etc.

[Led]

----
LucasArts did announce they were dropping support for SWBF1 well before the master servers went dark. I remember being surprised to find servers on the PC and PS2 after the announcement.

I don't think we got any notice on the PC side.  That is what killed our community.  Only with some pre-planning for VLAN (phobos) and this website and other clan sites were we able to make somewhat of a transition to tunngle.

[tirpider]

I saw the announcment afterwards on either LucasForums or some other dead LucasArts site while trying to figure out how to tell the various PS2 server packages apart.  By the time I saw it, the PS2 servers had been dropped and mysteriously started again for several months.  My inner conspiracy theorist would like to thank the unknown benefactor at Gamespy that rebooted them.

This is a sad topic.  I'm not a huge brand fan, but I did (and still do) like LucasArts.  From Day of the Tentacle and Grimm Fandango to X-Wing and Star Wars Battlefront, their publishings make up a huge part of my gaming history.   If I seem bitter in my previous posts about all this, it's because I hate to see them and their projects go this way.  It's like saying good bye to an old friend for the last time.  They are still out there, but we're all doing different things and it will never be the same again.

The therapy lesson is that we don't get to control what other people do. Time moves forward and things change. You don't have to like it, but you do have to adapt.

[FieroBull]

We can make a email to lucasarts if they can return our Gamespy servers.
A lot of people play SWBF And the 60& Knows how to play online.
This is a big  

[Led]

:dead horse: