When Gamespy shut down its servers a few months ago, a whole lot of games were affected- remember, Gamespy servers were powering the online multiplayer modes of several popular PC games, such as a whole lot of EA games, Bohemia Interactive games, and the entirety of the DS and Wii’s online games. As a matter of fact, most major online games on PC used Gamespy until a few years ago. So Gamespy shutting its servers down meant that these games, a whole lot of which still had thriving online communities, suddenly had the rug pulled out from under them.

One of these games was Borderlands- and if you know anything about Borderlands, you sort of know that the lack of an online mode kind of completely neuters the game. Thankfully, that may be changing, as publisher 2K Games has announced that full multiplayer will be returning to Borderlands via SteamWorks.

So that’s good news. It makes me happy to see that publishers are making an effort to preserve the full customer experience even for online games that have lived past their server hosts. Kind of gives me more confidence in that all digital future we all seem to be headed towards.

Command and Conquer was among the very many games that were going to be affected by the Gamespy server shutdown, that took a whole many games offline, including literally every single online game ever created for the Nintendo DS and Wii. In the aftermath of the servers going blank, a lot of companies have been trying to make efforts to make alternative arrangements to keep their games online and their communities active, including one truly admirable job done by Bohemia for its games.

EA is not one such company that has made any similar attempts. However, its fans, especially fans of the long running Command and Conquer real time strategy series, have taken it upon themselves to rally around and ensure that the C&C games remain online. One such attempt is C&C Online, which is a free launcher that emulates a Gamespy server and lets players continue to play online, even though the servers have all gone down. It’s even designed to allow the usage of mods.

That is pretty damn neat, and those are some pretty dedicated fans.

Yes, you read that right. While most companies with shooters on the market promptly drop support for the older game once the newer one in the series is released, Bohemia Interactive continues to support the older Arma II, in spite of the release of Arma III last year. But then again, they’re not like most other companies, are they? And neither is Arma like most other shooters.

Update 1.63 for Operation Arrowhead generally exists to move the matchmaking of the game from Gamespy’s servers to Steam. Remember, Gamespy recently shut down its servers for online play, and while that caused a lot of well liked online games to go dark, a lot of developers pledged to come up with alternate solutions to keep the online communities on their Gamespy dependent games alive.

Because this update moves matchmaking to Steam, it must also be downloaded through Steam. If you have a retail copy of the game (and therefore one that can’t receive Steam updates) you can simply activate its key on Steam, and download the game from there (and then proceed to update it there).

Bohemia has also announced an alternate solution for their other games affected by the Gamespy shutdown, which may be accessed here.

Gotta say, Bohemia’s commitment to its older games and its community is absolutely admirable here.

After the shutdown of multiplayer service GameSpy, there was trepidation over which games would eventually continue receiving support for the same. Publisher EA, which has a number of online titles that were affected by the GameSpy closure, has now revealed a list of 50 games that will stop receiving online and multiplayer support from June 30th onwards.

These include a number of top-tier titles and their expansions such as Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2 for PC, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (PS2), Battlefield 2142 for PC and Mac, Battlefield Vietnam for PC, Bejeweled 2 (Wii), Bulletstorm (PS3), Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (PC/Mac), Command & Conquer: Generals (PC/Mac), Crysis 1 and 2 for PC, Crysis Wars and many more.

Some titles like Star Wars: Battlefront 2 will continue on thank to third party support but what about the rest? It’s still possible that some of these games could continue but certainly not all of them. Thoughts? Let us know in the comments.

As GameSpy servers shut down on May 31st, bringing many older games’ multiplayer to a halt, Crytek has revealed that Crysis 1 and 2 for PC will be joining a similar fate. Both games will have their multiplayer go offline once GameSpy shuts down and Crytek isn’t moving them to a new location a la the Battlefield series.

Posting on the official forum, the developer stated that, “The single-player campaigns in both games are unaffected by this transition, and the multiplayer mode in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Crysis 2 remain playable.

“We’d like to thank everyone who has taken up arms in Crysis and Crysis 2′s multiplayer modes in the last few years, and apologize to the small but dedicated community of PC players who are still actively competing against one another.”

You can check out this Reddit list to find out which games are unaffected, which are likely to be affected and which are confirmed to be affected when GameSpy shuts down. Stay tuned for more information.

GameSpy Technology announced a few days back that it was going to be shutting down all its servers by the end of May, which means that a ton of old online games such as Battlefield 2, Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will have to either make the switch to another server or take the risk of going defunct as well.

EA, however, says it’s trying to make the transition for the games to make the switch to a new server, and that they might have something to announce soon.

“We’re working on transitioning those games after the shut down so you’ll still be able to play them,” EA said on Twitter.

An EA official later confirmed these comments, saying, “We’re working on finding a transition, but still have technical hurdles to overcome. We will make an announcement when there is news to share.”

Many games have been affected by the shutting down of GameSpy services, and as many as 800 developers and publishers. In fact, all Nintendo Wii and DS online games will no longer be playable online after GameSpy shuts down.

Ziff Davis who recently bought IGN and Ask Men have shut down a lot of properties, and there have been no reasons given for it, but we do have a statement.

Lot of people were laid off including influential ones from IGN like Ryan Clements, and this could be a part of their restructuring process.

“We are focusing on our two flagship brands, IGN and AskMen. Unfortunately, as a result, we have made the decision to close sites and restructure our teams accordingly,” a company spokesperson told Joystiq.

This comes at an interesting time because IGN’s traffic based on Twitter comments–soared and this applies to a lot of sites out there. The company was sold to Ziff Davis for a rumoured $100 million, and considering AskMen hasn’t been affected, it kind of shows the new owner’s priority.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.