Many of you may have seen or heard of an announcement by GameSpy regarding the withdrawal of their hosting services on 31 May 2014.
Effective May 31, 2014, GameSpy will cease providing all hosted services for all games still using GameSpy. If you have any questions about how this impacts your favorite title please contact the game's publisher for more information. Thanks for a great ride!Source: GameSpy Industries, Inc. website Unfortunately, we have no reason to doubt that the GameSpy hosting will, indeed, terminate on 31 May 2014. That will mean the end of the official online hosting in Command and Conquer Generals, Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour, Tiberium Wars, Kane's Wrath and Red Alert 3, which run on those services. As far as we know, Electronic Arts have not yet made alternative arrangements to host those games. If alternative arrangements are being made, they are unlikely to come into effect before the termination.
Please do not think that our games are dead; they are not. There are viable alternatives to the official servers. It's just that we will have to get used to doing things a little differently. We will lose our automatic statistics and, of course, our rank badges.
In the longer term, gamereplays will be looking at providing a bespoke hosting for our games, should alternative arrangements not otherwise be provided.
Although we will, no doubt, miss the official online hosting and we all have had some good times using it, a vibrant Command and Conquer community exists outside of there and has been happily thriving on the alternative hosting solutions for years. In a way, our loss may have a positive effect in drawing the communities together.
As we see it at present, the best alternative hosting system at the moment is
GameRanger. Although GameRanger may not be best for hosting tournaments (we may use other solutions for that), it makes a good replacement for the everyday game lobbies and already hosts a thriving Command and Conquer community. We are nonetheless looking at the currently alternative solutions and we are asking the playing community to help us evaluate those. One thing is plain, the best thing for all of us is for the playing community to stick together. There will be many, many players using the online hosting that do not know that the service will end; please do your best to let them know and tell them to look here for the latest news and developments.
See you on the battlefield, wherever it may be.
