With the announcement in April 2014 that the demise of Gamespy was just around the corner, the implications for many games that relied on its servers was clear – no more multiplayer for a large number of games. In some cases games were saved thanks to various collaborations, even Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 multiplayer was saved thanks to a Gameshare GRAW2 launcher that is still receiving support.
Recently however GRAW and GRAW2 received another blow – unannounced removal from the steam store a few weeks ago. This removal prompted some speculation in the steam forums over the reason, and more recently some game trading as shooter fans try to complete their Ghost Recon collection. Sadly now however, with the “Ghost Recon Complete” package gone from Steam it is increasingly difficult to achieve the ultimate Ghost Recon collection.
We reached out to Ubisoft for an explanation over the removal of GRAW/2 from steam and as we suspected, it is due to the non-functioning multiplayer component of these games due to the demise of Gamespy.
“A limited number of older Ubisoft games will no longer be playable online once Gamespy shuts down its services. This includes Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. For the other Ubisoft games listed on Gamespy’s site, we’ve decided to discontinue their online components, but all of them can still be played in their single player and offline modes. We apologize to the players that were still playing these games online. We hope they’ve enjoyed their experience and that they’ll consider transitioning to one of Ubisoft’s more recent titles instead, so that our teams can provide them with the best online experiences and services possible”
While some gamespy games successfully transitioned to Valve’s Steamworks servers, the same does not seem to be on the cards for GRAW2.
As some gamers are pointing out on the steam forums, this move does unfortunately mean that the fun of playing the GRAW/2 campaigns is something that new fans of the Ghost Recon series will miss out on, including the 700+ Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter mods we have for free download so so if you have the full Ghost Recon collection, cherish it!
Im lucky then i have the trilogy planning on Meeting wildlands
You can still play the famous GRAW2 multiplayer COOP and TDM at Ghost Recon Connect – http://ghostreconconnect.com/
you can still buy it from Amazon.com
Ghost Recon has such a Hugh following why shut it down.
Bring it to GOG, a lot of players will be happy.
“For the other Ubisoft games listed on Gamespy’s site, we’ve decided to discontinue their online components, but all of them can still be played in their single player and offline modes.”
Why not GRAW/2 though? The single player for both were foundational in my learning and love of mil-sim shooters. I can still find old disks on Amazon, but I’m with Vaaz. Release the single player only versions on GoG for digital downloads.