After 14 years, GameSpy closes down | Hacker News Reader

After 14 years, GameSpy closes down

au.pc.gamespy.com

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...

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

[2] http://pandodaily.com/2013/02/01/sources-ziff-davis-is-close...

News Corp, and old media in general, is the kiss of death for internet companies. News took IGN from $600m to $100m, and MySpace from $580m to $35m. Think about that if your exit strategy involves one of those companies. By all means take their money, but do it knowing they'll kill your company.

On the other hand, News Corp kept GameSpy.com alive as a distinct editorial brand for 7 years, when it was easy to fold it into IGN.com.

Old media in general is a slow, sloppy kiss of death.

Old media does a little better I think. My wife's company owns a few small newspapers up north and they do surprisingly well.

It is all about knowing your target demographic. I'm doubting your wife's company targets young adult males interested in video games and technology.

You are right, I meant the big media conglomerates, not necessarily old media.

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?

I use Kotaku and some french sites (nofrag.com & factornews.com)

I'm a fan of Giant Bomb, they've been acquired by Gamespot but they still seem to be fairly editorially-independent.

I'm also a huge Giant Bomb fan. Adding the URL here so others can find them easily: http://www.giantbomb.com

RockPaperShotgun

RPS focus only on PC gaming, but they really are head and shoulders above every other gaming site I've come across. Thoughtful, in-depth (and with a great sense of humour), I can't recommend them enough.

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

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.

http://www.eurogamer.net

Gamespot is not shutting down, it's not theirs anymore. Gamespot (as nuke.com) and 1up both spawned from EGM, which was once in ZD and it got shut down (EGM did). Gamespot has since changed owner, and EGM recently started publishing again independently.

I'd recommend an old good one that partnered with Gamespot for some time: GameFAQs. You'll find a huge repository of reviews from users as well as some fairly good forums.

Gamers with Jobs has an incredible community, editorials, and a games discussion podcast.

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com

>I miss the huge repositories of game reviews from sites like GameSpy - being able to look up reviews of old games?

Try MobyGames [1] for that. They collect user reviews as well as quotes and scores from and links to reviews from professional reviewers. Unlike MetaCritic MobyGames has a lot of information on older games and references reviews from sources that may be long gone (e.g., Computer Gaming World).

I'd also suggest Retronauts [2] and Insert Credit [3] if you like podcasts.

[1] https://www.mobygames.com/

[2] http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3156908&ct=PODCASTS

[3] http://www.insertcredit.com/

>they are shutting down GameSpot

I haven't seen this anywhere, do you have a source? Maybe I'm just tired, but I didn't see anything about that in your links. That's kind of sad; I'm not a huge fan of the site, but I actually trust their reviews more than most other gaming sites.

edit: are you sure you don't mean gamespy? In your source I see 'subsidiary gaming sites 1UP, UGO and GameSpy are all being shut down'

Some things never change, ever since the public Internet the Ziff-Davis brand has become the kiss of death for everything that touches it... only a matter of time now...

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...

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.

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.

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.

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-...

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

This is what I was looking for. Was wondering what implications this had for the games that relied on Gamespy for multiplayer. Would have been a shame if games like Crysis Wars that still has nice multiplayer community was also closed because the Gamespy client had been shutdown.

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.

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).

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.

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."

My reaction: Thank god.

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

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?

GameSpy Arcade and GameSpy are different creatures.

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

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

Is the games industry doing a lot worse? I read this article: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/22/ign-layoffs-and-sayin...

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?

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.

Why has this affected the magazines and online publications?

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.

Is this the games industry? I thought they just talked about it. I think games as an industry is better than ever, more homes have multiple consoles, more smart phones and tablets are out there, more portable game devices, etc... The talk around it all has been the same all along.

I know it cliche but I think gamers are changing and there are more that simply aren't addressed by the "gamer media." The notion of the hardcore gamer seems more and more dated and even a little unpopular any more.

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

http://www.gameranger.com/

Is Quake still alive?

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 :).

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Happy Puppy -> GameSpy -> ???

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

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!

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.

Give Giant Bomb a look. They're not quite the same as other sites but I've come to rely on them for getting a pretty even look at the way things are being built, and their video content is top-notch - genuinely entertaining and they tend to have various industry folks stop by for real conversations.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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