StarCraft-Inspired RTS From Former Blizzard Devs Losing Online Multiplayer Because Server Partner Was Bought By AI Company – aftermath.site

AI taketh, and it taketh some more

AI’s moronic, visionless stampede over all we hold dear has produced a variety of relatively predictable casualties—numerous jobs, environmental details in games, the concept of affordable hardware—but I can’t say I saw this one coming. What happens when a server company that used to specialize in games gets bought by an AI company? No more video game servers.

Frost Giant Studios, the ex-Blizzard devs behind the StarCraft-like swing (and, despite potential, miss) that is Stormgate, announced that the game will be losing online multiplayer support next month.

“Our game server orchestration partner, Hathora, has been purchased by an Al company, and they are winding down their service at the end of April,” the studio wrote in Stormgate’s Discord (via PC Gamer). “This will create a planned outage for Stormgate‘s multiplayer modes. Stormgate will be patched so that it can be played offline, but online modes will not be available at that point. We hope to restore online play in a future patch, but this work will be dependent on Frost Giant finding a partner to support ongoing operations.”

This does not bode well for Stormgate’s community, which built a serious head of steam with a $2.4 million Kickstarter campaign, only for an early access release and subsequent updates to fall short of expectations. Recent Steam reviews are “mostly negative,” and the game’s peak concurrent player count has yet to break 100 this year.

On Steam, Frost Giant disclosed that AI was used during Stormgate‘s development:

Some AI tools were used to help with early ideation in the development process. AI tools were also used to assist in up-rezzing our portraits and adding facial animations. Final assets were all painted by artists. We have not replaced any developers with AI and believe that talented people lie at the heart of exciting games.

Hathora, for its part, also provided server infrastructure for the somehow slightly less ill-fated Splitgate 2, the more ill-fated Spectre Divide, and Predecessor, a Paragon-like MOBA that seems to still be chugging along. Now Hathora is under the umbrella of Fireworks AI, where its founders believe it “can have the most impact.”

As far as signs of the times go, it really doesn’t get more on the nose than a company behind scaffolding for live-service games—prophecied cash cows that turned out to be money pits—pivoting to AI. I wish Hathora the best in its future endeavors when that bubble inevitably bursts as well.

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Nathan Grayson

Co-owner of the good website Aftermath. Reporter interested in labor and livestreaming. Send tips to nathan@aftermath.site or nathangrayson.666 on Signal.

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