Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and its assorted sequels will survive the GameSpy server shutdown.
The infamous GameSpy shutdown will take effect in just a couple days, killing the multiplayer functionality of a lot of popular games. The list of victims includes Relic’s Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War series of strategy games – or so we thought. A last-minute patch from the developers has been released for all seven games in the Dawn of War franchise, completely replacing their multiplayer infrastructure to save them from the shutdown.
The most recent title in the series, Dawn of War II: Retribution, uses Steamworks to handle its multiplayer – but older entries relied on GameSpy and other “external” servers. Relic, not wanting to see its back catalogue lose a huge part of its value, devised a plan to migrate the games’ multiplayer services to more stable homes. Each game in the series is being integrated with the hosting and matchmaking system Relic developed for Company of Heroes 2 – which actually means that the Dawn of War multiplayer isn’t just being preserved, it’s being improved.
“This update – and continued further support for DoW and DoW2 – is a big step for us at Relic,” writes Dawn of War design lead Philippe Boulle. “It’s a concrete signal of support for the Dawn of War franchise from us and from SEGA as a whole.”
Dawn of War now joins Halo: Combat Evolved in the “saved by patches” lifeboat. It’s good to see a developer watching out for its older games, especially in this age of fire-and-forget releases.
Source: Steam Community
