'AI' Is Coming For Your Online Gaming Servers Next (pcworld.com) 35
"Consumer PC parts aren't the only things being gobbled up by the 'AI' industry," writes PCWorld's Michael Crider. "A Starcraft-inspired strategy game is shutting down its multiplayer servers because the hosting company got bought out for 'AI.'" The game will still be playable offline for now, but the shutdown highlights the ripple effects of the AI boom on the gaming industry. Amid the ongoing hardware shortages, AI companies are basically gobbling up as much infrastructure as they can to repurpose it for AI workloads. From the report: 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.
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.
DirectIP (Score:5, Insightful)
Games used to allow you to host a server on your own computer. Let's start demanding modern games do the same.
You have no IP address. Your neighborhood does. (Score:1)
How are you going to host a game server on a home computer if you share your IPv4 address with other subscribers to the same ISP in the same neighborhood,[1] and the combined modem and router that your home ISP requires all subscribers to use lacks an option for port forwarding? Both of these are true, for example, of T-Mobile US Home Internet.
[1] Many home ISPs apply carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) to conserve IPv4 addresses since the worldwide exhaustion.
comcast has real IPV4 and IPV6 still. (Score:4, Informative)
comcast has real IPV4 and IPV6 still.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Well, it will obviously be an issue for some people in third world banana republics like the USA where you can be stuck with a monopoly by a corrupt ISP
But for most people though it won't be an issue, i'd also love for the industry to go more into the self hosted route again (though it's probably wishful thinking.... self hosting is too hard for the common person ^^'.....)
Re: You have no IP address. Your neighborhood does (Score:2)
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Not sure what problem you're trying to fix. The issue with servers has always been that to punch through NAT you need the server to contact the client. But that issue was always that there was an attempt to connect to the address of a server directly, we live in a "matchmaking" world or an "invite" world. You can still of course connect to servers directly but that and only that will fail.
I am behind a NAT, a friend of mine is behind CG-NAT, we have no problems playing for example 7 Days To Die, which very
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I imagine that most gamers are unwilling to pay for business-class service if business-class service is the only "real" service offered at their home address.
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You don't. Because home internet
Re: DirectIP (Score:2)
Plenty of games used things like GameSpy where the online component is handling matchmaking and even though he actual game is peer-to-peer or one of the players is the server or something, they still won't work because the matchmaking servers are gone.
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GameSpy, now there's something I've not seen or heard in decades. You're right though, NAT and IP addresses are a matchmaking problem, not a server communication problem. Steam, PSN, Battle.net etc they all handle that for you.
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Many games still do this, but not via directIP. You still do rely on having an external matchmaking service. But that can be offloaded to Steam, PSN, or whatever.
E.g. Helldivers II. The host server can even be a Playstation.
The thing is this doesn't work for every type of game. It works best for private games played with friends, not big public spectacles. When you include skill based matchmaking it becomes even harder, where suddenly your network connection is at the mercy of some random dude's internet qu
Had to reread that... (Score:2)
I read that as the AI's were gaming now. I can just see MOLT book filled with ravings by AI's who "P)WN3D" meatsacks around the world in games. I might almost feel better that it was an AI vs knowing an 11 year old korean girl just smoked me for the 10th time today...
When will anyone else say "enough already" (Score:3)
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I'm ready to drive a wooden stake into the heart of these AI companies. They're consuming everything and delivering great promises. What good is the ultimate AI if the AI companies swallow all the resources on their way to the top. Or bottom. The only thing the human have left are stone knives & bears kins.
The AI companies have figured out the game. They're promising rich people they can continue to become richer without having to pay poor people even the little bit they pay them today. Those rich folks can, in turn, rig the game so that the AI companies can continue to suck down resources ever faster, including tying governments into it, using regulations only to prop up the biggest players, and hold out the smallest players, and creating propaganda that far too many believe that if you try to slow them down
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Good. (Score:2)
This will help push FOSS gaming and community driven self-hosting of gameservers back towards mainstream. And that's a good thing.
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I'd love to agree with you, but nobody plays this game. It seems like everyone else mostly found this game unfun too. It's a shame, I really wanted to like it.
Why not move to Hetzner or other baremetal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do they not just migrate to another ISP???
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Re: Why not move to Hetzner or other baremetal? (Score:2)
When electricity rationing sets in (Score:1)
Does anyone have an example where there is electricity rationing due to data centers overloading the electrical grid?
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I do not, but I also do not see how the question is relevant to the story. If there is electricity rationing due to datacenters, what difference does it make what the workload is?
So much shite (Score:2)
Peer to Peer (Score:4, Interesting)
If I remember correctly, Blizzard games like Starcraft originally did the actual multiplayer game state synchronization as direct communication between the players, Battle.Net just did the matchmaking and chat which is pretty low bandwidth.
Maybe they can rewrite their netcode to be more like that.
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You need a matchmaking server for that to work, but these do not need good bandwidth or computing power. Essentially just an issue of using well-known approaches.
Is this the future for most online games ??? (Score:2)
I don't think so (Score:2)
More and more people have enough bandwidth at home to host.
It could be worse (Score:2, Informative)
I guess it's better than another timeline where it instead came for people, hardwired them into the game, and harnessed them for electricity.
Service games were the wrong answer (Score:2)
AI coming for all servers? (Score:2)
Including HTTP servers hosting websites like this one? Will all but the largest web sites become too expensive to host?
Re: (Score:2)
The correct answer here is that demand has increased the cost of compute and telecom. Want your online games? They need to charge enough to pay for the increased compute and telecom costs. It's simple economics.