Gamespy multiplayer servers are shutting down, affecting more games than you realize

What do Borderlands, Gotham City Imposters, Grand Theft Auto IV, Civilization IV, Read Dead Redemption, and Sonic All-Stars Racing have in common? Their multiplayer is powered by GameSpy. Rather, their multiplayer was powered by GameSpy; the company announced today that their servers will go offline forever effective May 31st.

So what's going to happen to all the games that depended on GameSpy? That depends. Activision and Rockstar confirmed to IGN that their games won't be affected. Epic Games told Polygon that they're working on an in-house solution. Nintendo is abandoing . Bohemia (ARMA franchise) posted the following statement on their forums:

Important notice: effective May 31, 2014, Gamespy will cease providing all hosted services for all games.

This is going to affect multiplayer in our games that use Gamespy for matchmaking, cd keys authentification and NAT traversal from Arma: Resistance to Arma 3. We are planning to introduce an alternative solution using Steam to Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead and Arma 3 users.

Other games (Take On Helicopters, Arma 2, Arma 2: Free, Arma, Arma: Cold War Assault) will have more limited multiplayer experience with loss of server browser, cd key authentification and NAT traversal systems. That said, direct IP connection to servers should work even after Gamespy services are no longer available.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

While we wait for publishers to make official statements on their older (but possibly still beloved) franchises and their continued multiplayer presence, it's probably a good idea to get in one last game or two of the hundreds of titles that will be affected.

[IGN]

Jake Valentine is a regular freelance contributor for GameZone. When he’s not writing about (or playing) video games, chances are he’s playing a board game, Magic: the Gathering, or obsessing over food. You can follow him on Twitter @hop3less.