In Reply To #21
The company I am with now was bought out by Boeing about 3 years ago. Startup to acquisition was always in the plan. So far we've benefited from "Big Brother Boeing" and the only major inconvenience is having to use their time tracking system. We've be left relatively alone and actually influence a lot of their new processes (we often have Boeing reps coming and asking us how we develop software so they can spread it to other sites). It probably helps that we are strict R&D kind of stuff (while the majority of Boeing is mechanical engineering kind of stuff, ya know, planes), and, we're making gobs of money for them. If we ever get less profitable I am sure they'll try and "fix" us with their policies (and i'll be fixing to get another job) but so far, pretty great.

In Reply To #21

The strongest part of GameSpy's remaining business by a wide margin is their software wing. They're still responsible for a LOT of the multiplayer tech that you find in today's games. In fact, it can be argued that the software wing is the main reason they got bought.

Arcade and Arena still get some use too, I believe.

FilePlanet's toast. Forumplanet's gone. The Planet* sites are gone. The hosting part of the business is gone. GameSpy.com is meh. Basically the web side of the company has been slowly dissolved or incorporated into IGN properties.

Side note: if you are the *acquiring* company and you claim not much will change, that claim is probably true. When we bought MPlayer, nothing changed about GameSpy really. But MPlayer was gutted and destroyed. Similarly, not much changed about IGN after the GameSpy buyout, but GameSpy changed a ton.

Honestly if I were IGN I'd kill GameSpy.com as a content destination and turn it into a promotional site for their software efforts.

-chris

IGN sold GameSpy Technologies to Glu Mobile a couple of months ago now.

And Comrade was apparently scooped up by GameFly some time ago.

I really don't get what's left.

In Reply To #33

Oh, right, I forgot about the sale. So yeh ... there really isn't much left. Wouldn't surprise me if GameSpy.com eventually just becomes a redirect to IGN.

-chris

Sometimes when I buy games with multiplayer components I still see the GameSpy logo or a GameSpy trademark among the other trademarks.

I only joined the forums in 2004, and it was just after Chris left so I was always left with the 'golden age hangover' feeling. But I was reading Gamespy from just after the turn of the century, and you could feel it losing its independence, the 'edge' that separated it from the others almost as soon as IGN took over.

I pretty much abandoned the website for Eurogamer then, which had the same vibe Gamespy used to.

Several years ago, I created a fake Facebook profile for a guy named Coy Ote and immediately began friending all of his contacts and posting about how much Coy loves Nickelback and Twilight. Good times. Good times.

In Reply To #37

It's still there, I was actually re-reading that just last week for a laugh.

It worked.

This counts as a hate crime, you fuckers!

What ever happened to CitizenC and Hellchick?

In Reply To #40

I like to think that CitizenC died in a fire.

In Reply To #41

The man was a dick (and apparently liked them too), but he didn't deserve that. Sure he was one of the worst admins I ever saw on any website ever. But death by fire? Nah, I save that kind of hatred for furries (kidding, of course ).

I still laugh when I think of how we stole the IRC channel from him. Does anyone use IRC anymore? I haven't been on in years since I picked up a stalker in the Planet Doom channel...

In Reply To #42

As well as being a dick and a shit admin, he decided to pay himself for some of the content that I wrote. So yeah, still hoping he didn't spend the money* on smoke detectors.

*$8. Which may strike some as inordinately petty, but think how much that would be with inflation!

In Reply To #43

$7.










I live in the USA...











And I could really use an extra $7...

And somewhere Macavity is whining about how no one likes him because he wants to fuck kittens. But other than that he's totally an OK guy!!*

*He isn't. Let this also be a case of, oops the fire got a bit out of control.