EA has issued an official update regarding yesterday’s announcement that the company would no longer be able to support a number of titles affected by the GameSpy shut down.
“Since GameSpy’s announcement, our teams have been working to evaluate options to keep services up and running,” EA writes in a recent news update.
“Unfortunately, due to technical challenges and concerns about the player experience, we do not have a solution at this time. Online services for EA games on the GameSpy platform will be closed down at the end of June.”
The company also writes that they are “investigating community-supported options” to keep some of their multiplayer-focused titles alive and kicking, but have nothing to announce at the moment.
“We know some of these games are still fan favorites, including Battlefield 2, Battlefield 1942, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Command & Conquer games. We are still investigating community-supported options to preserve online functionality for these titles, such as multiplayer. Significant technical hurdles remain, and at this time we don’t have anything to announce.”
Meanwhile, we caught wind of reports that the Battlefield 2 mod, Project Reality, will survive the shutdown, as its creators have taken action to replace GameSpy’s hosting services.
Project manager “AncientMan” wrote this statement on the official forums:
“We’ve already developed our own master server, and it’s running quite nicely, replacing the services that GameSpy hosted. FH2 contacted us and they will be using our servers as well, so they’re fine too. After a bit of testing has occurred, this will be going out with v1.2, which will obviously be released before this shutdown occurs.
“For you regular player folk, the only thing you’ll notice about the whole situation is when updating to 1.2, you’ll get a message box saying some stuff, your profiles will be deleted, and you’ll be prompted to make a new profile. From there, it’s business as usual.”
There may be hope yet for those still enjoying some of those classic Battlefield titles and other EA games. We’ll be sure to keep you updated as we hear more.