News

Sierra closes 21 Game Servers
Posted: 08.10.2008 10:35 by Jamie Davey Comments: 8
Sierra announced today that it will be closing 21 game servers on 1st November. This is probably due to the Activision Blizzard merger, although we cannot confirm this as Sierra haven't given a reason for shutting down these servers.

Here's a list of the effected games:

1.Alien vs Predator 2
2. Arcanum
3. Caesar IV
4. Dark Reign 2
5. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom
6. Empire Earth
7. Empire Earth 2
8. Empire Earth: Age of Conquest
9. Ground Control
10. Ground Control2
11. Homeworld
12. Homeworld: Cataclysm
13. Nolf2
14. Red Baron
15. Sanity
16. Star Trek: Armada
17. SWAT3: EE
18. SWAT3: GOTY
19. The Incredible Machine
20. Tribes2
21. Vampire
Source: Sierra
Digg
N4G
Del.icio.us

User Comments

By Praetorian (SI Core) on Oct 08, 2008
Praetorian
Shutting down game servers always a sad news...
By Wowerine (SI Elite) on Oct 08, 2008
Wowerine
Yep. I just heard the other day that (Maxis) EA just shut down all the Sims Online servers. Maybe this doesn't mean much to the SI community, because we don't play that girly stuff. But as things are going on in the future I might even want to lay my hands on that Sims 3 game... Looks pretty neat.

And yeah, so it goes down... Sad for someone, but still doesn't mean much to most of us. Those are really old games.
By lichlord (SI Veteran Member) on Oct 08, 2008
lichlord
tought these games have an age if you get me but server shutdown is caused mostly that they don't get any winning money of it could be cause of the global economical problems or just that the games are dead or almost dead
By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Oct 08, 2008
herodotus
Most of the games have no players on the Servers now (Dark Reign 2 & Ground Control II, I know definitely) and a lot have sequels. Sierra have lost Vivendi to Activision Blizzard, and those guys were their biggest developers.
By devel (SI Core) on Oct 08, 2008
devel
That's very true heretodus, as time goes on, it's only normal that player count decreases. Unlike WoW, which is only tending to increase, weird stuff.
And of course that it's quite sad, because if you built a reputation online, you either pass on to another game, or become an Hero for all those that played with you for those countless days.
By Orv (SI Core) on Oct 08, 2008
Orv
I have always felt that it would be a very big "good faith" move on the part of those holding the code rights if they would release the server code to the gaming community at the time when servers/master-servers are discontinued for a game.

Maybe I am just being naive...
By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Oct 08, 2008
herodotus
Good question Orv. To partly answer this, it is unfortunately an expensive undertaking to run a server, let alone rent one. To rent a server on say CoD4 is around AUD $200 per month. Imagine then the cost to own and run one, let alone decide which company to contract with. Like it or not, gamers are pretty tight-fisted when it comes to spending, and paying to use a server on an old game with questionable member audience is a huge financial risk with no reward. We tried here n Australia with a modded version of CoD2, and the hiring of it alone was prohibitive...with no promise of continued service.
By Orv (SI Core) on Oct 10, 2008
Orv
I had a comment, but I questioned whether it was proper to mention here... so I deleted it. (Due to legality)
Needless to say, I have heard of games being taken by fan communities and servers run on micro scale, hosting a server list and allowing individuals to host single servers.