
After 14 years, GameSpy closes down - jacques_chester
http://au.pc.gamespy.com/articles/122/1227460p1.html
======
nikcub
A bit of background. Ziff Davis (parent company J2 global, Nasdaq JCOM)
purchased IGN[0] from News Corp. Of the major properties in the IGN group:
IGN.com, AskMen, UGO.com, 1up.com etc. they are shutting down GameSpot, 1UP
and UGO[1] and laying off a bunch of people in the remainder of the business.

In the media world most people associate 'online' with efficient, and this
demonstrates that it isn't necessarily true. There is still a lot of
competitive pressure if all you are doing is running a fat organization and
replacing paper with a web server.

Ziff apparently only paid $100M for the business[2] (News paid $600M+ only
years ago) and IGN has 53 million unique visitors (in a high yield demographic
- young males) across their properties, yet they couldn't make the business
model work. Demonstrates just how 'thin' the new media businesses have to
become in order to survive and the challenge that old media companies are
facing.

[0]
[http://investor.j2global.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=737...](http://investor.j2global.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=737575)

[1] [http://kotaku.com/5986027/ziff-davis-shuts-1up-gamespy-
and-u...](http://kotaku.com/5986027/ziff-davis-shuts-1up-gamespy-and-ugo)

[2] [http://pandodaily.com/2013/02/01/sources-ziff-davis-is-
close...](http://pandodaily.com/2013/02/01/sources-ziff-davis-is-close-to-
buying-ign/)

~~~
Tichy
GameSpy and Gamespot are the only gaming sites I knew. Where does one look for
information on games now?

Edit: thanks for the suggestions so far! They all seem to be in blog style,
with the typical horrible navigation (basically, you are limited to the most
recent posts). I miss the huge repositories of game reviews from sites like
GameSpy - being able to look up reviews of old games?

~~~
m12k
The Verge spawned a gaming-only sister site: <http://www.polygon.com/> I'd
also highly recommend <http://www.escapistmagazine.com/> and if you have any
interest in the development behind the games then <http://www.gamasutra.com/>
is great

~~~
bitsoda
Polygon has a great editorial staff. I just wish their site had more
information density. As it stands, I can only view three news entries without
having to scroll down on my laptop's 13.3" monitor. I wish they had a more
dense viewing layout. Their mobile site is very usable, however.

------
seanmcdirmid
RIP GameSpy. I owe a lot of my interest in programming languages to an essay I
read in 2000 on GameSpy back when they were much cooler and had a "dev week;"
the author was some guest writer named Tim Sweeney, illustrated by some outfit
called "penny arcade;" alas its not hosted by GameSpy anymore but, thank gosh
for time machines:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20000302031550/http://www.gamespy...](http://web.archive.org/web/20000302031550/http://www.gamespy.com/articles/devweek_b.shtm)

------
alan_cx
My experience of gamespy is a little different to what Im reading here. For me
it is or was some bit of software that got installed that I never ever asked
for or wanted. To me it was some sort of evil spyware I never asked for, a bit
like being forced to install a tool bar in my browser. I'd get rid of it only
for another game to replace it. When I first saw it, I looked it up and
realised it was not dangerous or evil, so in the end I ignored it as an
irritant not worth worrying about. Its still there in my start menu now.

First thing I thought when I saw the headline was, good. So, Im finding it
fascinating that today I see a thread full of people who use(d) and love(d)
it. I really never knew it had value to any one, let alone some fondness.

~~~
axusgrad
Way back when everyone played Quake, there was no central server list, and
GameSpy was how you found new servers. I installed it and kept it upgraded a
number of years, until I no longer needed it.

~~~
mattmanser
Yes, it didn't start out evil at all, it started out awesome, Gamespy was how
you found servers to play on for games 10 years ago before games had their own
match making. It became awful when it tried to be both.

It just morphed over time.

------
jschuur
FYI, there's 2 parts to the GameSpy brand. IGN sold the technology group,
behind in-game online middleware used by over 1,000 games (including BF 1942
e.g.) to GLU Mobile last year:

[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120802006354/en/Glu-...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120802006354/en/Glu-
Acquires-GameSpy-Technology-Expand-Connected-Cross-Platform)

What's being shut down here is the editorial GameSpy.com site.

~~~
jonheller
Interesting, thanks. I didn't realize they were two separate entities.

I remember Gamespy as being one of the first software options to easily
facilitate multiplayer gaming back before it was baked in to most games.

~~~
jschuur
GameSpy, the standalone server browsing client of the early 2000s which
evolved from the Quake specific QuakeSpy was originally a third party
developed app by 3 programmers and brought in-house by company behind the
'Planet' brand of community web sites. Eventually, the newly renamed GameSpy
Industries created in-game solutions to provide server browsing and more as
middleware and hosted the backend services used by these games.

GLU Mobile inherited that backend for legacy games still using it, and now
need to figure out how to license it out (or collect pending licensing fees
from games that have been out for 5-8 years).

------
ChuckMcM
I would be more sympathetic if I hadn't had several magazines gutted in
exactly this same way by Ziff Davis. Buy the competition, kill it off, more
for your 'main' brand. I still miss Modern Electronics and Radio Electronics.

Same story to "Sure its making a profit, it just isn't profitable enough."
Sigh.

------
asaramis
Captures the entire problem with the news industry right now: "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."

------
andrewguenther
My reaction: Thank god.

GameSpy has been a plague to the gaming experience since its inception.

~~~
daurnimator
haha, I actually exclaimed "Thank God" when I read the title.

Though reading the article it just sounds like their news site/blog is
shutting down?

~~~
eropple
GameSpy Arcade and GameSpy are different creatures.

------
luckyjohn7
Really sad to see the gamespy brand come to an end, 12 years ago the GameSpy
desktop application was revolutionary for connecting with friends on servers
and finding the best gaming opportunities.

RIP

------
Nursie
I still remember QSpy, and its text-mode linux version. I wasted so many happy
days in QuakeWorld because of that little program.

Happy days.

/old

------
kkt262
Is the games industry doing a lot worse? I read this article:
[http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/22/ign-layoffs-and-
sayin...](http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/22/ign-layoffs-and-saying-
goodbye-to-1up-and-gamespy)

Although they don't say it outright, it strongly implies that the game
industry is not as profitable as it once was.

I haven't been a gamer for years, so it's shocking that these
sites/publications are shutting down.

Can someone enlighten me as far as what's going on in the gaming industry?

~~~
djt
The money has shifted from one area to the next.

Steam made little money at the start, but the market shifted and now theyre a
big player.

I remember buying gaming magazines and using BBS's back in the day but the
market shifted.

Same with consoles vs PC due to pirating.

~~~
kkt262
Why has this affected the magazines and online publications?

~~~
djt
By reading the article, seems they have a few games websites and so are
consolidating them. I would say there are less advertising dollars going to
these kinds of sites compared to paying to get on the front page of Steam for
example.

------
jonny_eh
So how am I going to find Quake servers to connect to now?

~~~
spoiledtechie
Is Quake still alive?

~~~
nbroyal
Barely. Check out <http://www.quakeservers.net/> for server lists.

Seeing this thread actually inspired me to get Quake running on my Mac. Just
left a free-for-all deathmatch that I won handily using a trackpad. Still got
it :).

~~~
pmh
There's also Quake Live (<http://www.quakelive.com>) if you're looking for
some Q3 action

------
ivzar
Awww. I grew up on GameSpy. Best of luck to the staff in their future
endeavors.

------
CosmicShadow
I remember GameSpy fondly for having those really awesome and funny short
stories that I think were actually done by the Penny Arcade guys. The Divine
Systems Administrator and the guy who overclocked everything, and the guy who
plays an FPS quicksaving every 3 steps and never using rocket ammo. I want to
recover those as I remember them being some of the funniest stuff I ever read
back in the day, and they even had crossovers!

Their app was annoying at times, but it did server a purpose that was really
cool and ahead of it's time I think.

~~~
ricree
The stories were written by Dave "Fargo" Kosak (he's currently lead quest
designer for World of Warcraft, btw).

You aren't wrong in remembering the Penny Arcade connection, though. About
half of the stories had accompanying illustrations drawn by PA's Gabe.

------
belorn
I old icon of the industry, but it feels like they shoot themselves in the
foot when they took down daily victim from their site years ago.

------
jacques_chester
There's a bug with how their page is served. If you go through and see this:

    
    
        //
    

Just refresh and you'll see the story.

------
jamesjguthrie
This is pretty sad. I used to spend tons of time on GameSpy Arcade and
MPlayer.com before GameSpy took it over.

I have fond memories of playing AvP and Command & Conquer through these
services as a kid. I always enjoyed the chat sessions while games were being
arranged.

I also spent a ton of time reading GameSpy.com reviews. For a while the site
was my go-to-place for reviews.

------
justjimmy
Happy Puppy -> GameSpy -> ???

Guess time to check out IGN unless anyone have other suggestions.

~~~
reissbaker
Eurogamer and Edge are reliably good. Polygon is very new but excellent.
TIGSource covers just about any indie game that gets released, although it's
better as a source of information about what's out there than as a reliable
review site — the indie community is pretty small, and the reviewers are often
friends with the developers. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has some of the best
coverage of anything that runs on a computer, including independent games, but
it doesn't cover consoles. Venus Patrol focuses on a more artsy niche,
although its coverage can be pretty spotty and it's quite new too.

Hope that helps!

~~~
shawn-butler
<http://www.rockpapershotgun.com> is indeed pretty good.

<http://www.gameinformer.com> went from being pretty good to being utter
garbage in such a short period of time that maybe it's just a local minimum,
but I have my doubts.

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bane
What does make me sad is that there's a huge amount of content that they've
put out, lots of retrogaming folks research using these long lasting sites
like this, and now it's all gone.

------
wittekm
Is this just GameSpy the gaming website (eugh) or GameSpy's server browser
(also eugh, but it serves a purpose in life)? BF1942 and Quake and a couple
other older games used it.

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girvo
No! I remember using GameSpy to tee-up games with my friends. It was a great
program. I also loved The All-Seeing Eye, was also brilliant but had less
features. Such a shame.

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jondiggsit
I'll never forget playing AQ2 on Pearlmankey servers. Thank you for all the
great connections GameSpy!

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venomsnake
There goes Flintlocke and Flintlocke vs Horde ... sad for site and the team :(

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zobzu
or the short version "u no make enough money byebye" ;-)

