GameSpy blames devs in server shutdown row

New GameSpy owner Glu has hit back at “inaccurate” reports that it shut down game servers for a number of titles without warning.

One developer Rebellion claimed that the closure of multiplayer servers for games such as Sniper Elite were closed without notification, and stated it could not afford to spend tens of thousands of pounds to keep it online.

In a statement on its Facebook page, GameSpy’s new owners said that a number of publisher partners had allowed their contracts to lapse without paying for the service.

It also claimed that in some cases, this had gone on for as long as four years – without GameSpy shutting down the servers.

“We cannot be expected to provide a service free of charge to publishers who choose not to renew their service agreements and in some cases remain delinquent in delivering payment for past services,” read the statement.

GameSpy said that in each reported case, developers were “well aware” that they had not made the required payments under their agreements.

The company likened the situation to fans attributing fault to a hosting company of a popular website for ceasing hosting services, when the website owner had refused to pay its hosting bill.

Rebellion co-founder Jason Kingsley recently told PCGamesN that his studio had been paying a “modest annual amount” to keep the Sniper Elite servers running, but after finding out that online functionality had been shut down, it was met with a higher cost that it could not afford.

“We had been paying a modest annual amount to keep them running for our older titles, and that at least it would have been a good idea to at least pre-warn our fans that this was happening,” said Kingsley.

“The amount it would cost to keep the servers running now would be prohibitively high for us, and rewriting the code would also be expensive for us even if we could figure out how to do it in such old code.

“Sometimes things do come to an end, but usually communication of that fact beforehand is the best and most proper way to handle this sort of situation.”