Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 Multiplayer Servers Taken Offline

Back in August of this year, a San Francisco-based “developer and publisher of freemium games” called Glu Mobile purchased the GameSpy multiplayer technologies from IGN for $2.7 million. And while such an acquisition isn’t too concerning in and of itself, this new report on Slashdot is:

Over the last month, both game publishers and gaming communities alike were surprised to find their GameSpy multiplayer support suddenly disabled by GLU Mobile, who purchased GameSpy from IGN this August. Many games, including Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, Swat 4, Sniper Elite, Hidden and Dangerous 2, Wings of War, Star Wars: Battlefront are no longer able to find (and in some cases even host) multiplayer games. While games like Neverwinter Nights are still able to directly connect to servers if players know the IP address, less-fortunate gamers expressed outrage on GLU Mobile’s ‘Powered by GameSpy’ Facebook page. In an open letter to their Sniper Elite gaming community today, UK game developer Rebellion explained it was helpless to change the situation: ‘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. 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. 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, again, at the cost of many tens of thousands of pounds.’

So Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 are impacted so far (at least as far as lobbies go), but how many other CRPGs have utilized GameSpy technology for their multiplayer? Here’s to hoping fan-made patches are able to get this sorted out for the games we care about most.