Multiplay Is Shutting Down Community Servers After 20 Years of Business

Published: January 9, 2019 10:00 AM /

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multiplay servers killing floor 2

Multiplay servers are well-known in the gaming community. Pretty much any game that lets you host a dedicated server and has a decently-sized audience has or had support for game servers from this company. Among these titles is Killing Floor, the very first game I reviewed for TechRaptor (and my very first article, too.) Unfortunately, those days are coming to an end.

An announcement from the company states that Multiplay servers will be a thing of the past in just a few short weeks. In short, more and more games have eschewed community servers and opted to host things themselves or rely on peer-to-peer connections. This has rendered a company of Multiplay's scale increasingly irrelevant in this particular area of server hosting. An aging code base can't quite keep up with modern demands, and the entire service is no longer considered a good value prospect by the company.

As a result, Multiplay servers will be shutting down for good on February 28, 2019. Any customers who have server time beyond this date will be receiving a refund. Obviously, it's advisable that players back up their server data to an external source if they don't want to lose what they're currently hosting. 24/7 support teams will remain on staff until March 31, 2019, to help sort out any last-minute problems that clients may have. Additional details are being sent along to current customers via e-mail.

It's not just their community game servers that are closing, either. An F.A.Q. on the company's website states that Multiplay servers for Mumble and Teamspeak will also be closing down on the same date of February 28, 2019. This effectively is transitioning Multiplay away from the community side of hosting game servers.

That's not to say Multiplay is shutting down, though. It appears that they have quite a robust business involving cloud computing and other hosting solutions, as well as providing those dedicated servers for developers. With the end of Multiplay servers, community-run gaming servers just got a little more challenging. Let's hope someone else picks up the mantle.

What do you think of the end of Multiplay servers for individual customers? Do you think someone else will carry on with this kind of service to the same level? Let us know in the comments below!

 

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A photograph of TechRaptor Senior Writer Robert N. Adams.
| Senior Writer

One of my earliest memories is playing Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I've had a controller in my hand since I was 4 and I… More about Robert N