‘AI’ is coming for your online gaming servers next

You can’t find RAM, you can’t find storage, you can’t find a GPU. But at least you can play the PC games you already own, right? Well, maybe not. Consumer PC parts aren’t the only things being gobbled up by the “AI” industry. A Starcraft-inspired strategy game is shutting down its multiplayer servers because the hosting company got bought out for “AI.”

The game in question is Stormgate, a crowdfunded revival of the real-time strategy genre that has languished in the last decade or so. The developer Frost Giant Studios told its players on Discord (spotted by PC Gamer) that it would be unable to continue multiplayer access past the end of this month. The “game server orchestration partner” was bought by an AI company—the developer’s words, not mine—which means that the multiplayer aspects of the game will have a “planned outage.”

The devs say the game will be patched for offline play, presumably including its single-player campaign mode and co-op modes, but “online modes will not be available at that point.” They’re hoping to bring back online play in a later update, but that’ll depend on “finding a partner to support ongoing operations.” That sounds like old-fashioned player-hosted games with lobbies aren’t in the cards, at least not yet.

Frost Giant’s server provider is Hathora, which was bought by a company called Fireworks AI last month. Fireworks describes its offerings as “open-source AI models at blazing speed, optimized for your use case, scaled globally with the Fireworks Inference Cloud.” So, yeah, Hathora’s infrastructure will likely be used for yet more generative “AI.”

And according to GamesBeat, it’s planning to shut down the game service aspect of its company completely. That means Stormgate probably isn’t going to be the last game affected. Hathora also provides online services for Splitgate 2, among others. I’m contacting Hathora for comment and will update this story if I receive a response.

Stormgate was met with excitement from strategy gamers who’ve been poorly served the last few years, aside from a few notable remakes and remasters. The development studio being formed by two Blizzard veterans certainly helped, as did the sci-fi setting, taking clear inspiration from Warhammer 40,000 just like Starcraft did back in the 90s.

But the game landed with a bit of a thud late last year, and it’s currently sitting at a “Mixed” rating on Steam. More recent reviews are “mostly negative,” though none seem to be reacting to the shutdown news in particular. Stormgate is free to play, but its full Ashes of Creation single-player campaign costs $25.

Valve

Gamers aren’t thrilled about the way “AI” initiatives are carving out sections of the industry, making hardware unaffordable for players and filling up game stores with low-effort slop. The much-anticipated Steam Machine seems to be delayed due to the hardware issue, console prices are going up years after launch in an unprecedented reversal, and cheap devices are being scuppered just because the expense of the components makes them impossible to build.

Nvidia, easily the most visible beneficiary of the “AI” bubble due to industrial sales, is trying to inject a generative “AI” filter into its newest gaming software while reportedly skipping any new consumer GPUs for the first time in decades. Gamers are, unsurprisingly, less than receptive.

And none of that is even touching the broader social issues of “AI,” the skyrocketing price of energy, the environmental impact. It sucks. That’s it. It just sucks.

If there’s a lesson to be learned in this situation, it might be that smaller game projects need contingency plans, at least if they include a multiplayer component. Remote-hosted servers have become the norm for online multiplayer because they allow for more complex and managed gameplay, not to mention things like live services. But for games like this, it might be worth looking into old-fashioned player-to-player connections as a fallback when things go awry.