[gnif]

This information is hard to find and trawling the forums for hours I discovered what has occurred.

GameSpy is the service that ArmA2 uses to publish the server for players to find, when you load the server list in game, via DayZ Commander, or PlayWithSix it uses GameSpy's service to load the server list. The problem is that GameSpy is closing down.

Versions of ARMA2:OA later then 1.63.112555 require steam to run as it now uses Valve's server service instead of GameSpy. When GameSpy shut down, searching for servers will break, and the community will be forced onto the new version anyway.

Pros of Steam Integration:
  * The player UID is changing from BI's own thing, to a proper SteamID, this will make it impossible for players to change their UID to get around bans/restrictions, etc.
  * The server brower in steam is very fast & nice.

Cons:
  * BI have not back ported the new steam code into the older STABLE versions of Arma2:OA, which means that they are forcing everyone onto their buggy beta version, and calling it "stable".
  * Because of the playerUID change BattlEye will stop working unless the server is updated.
  * Because the playerUID changes, everyone will be fresh spawns on Epoch unless I write some special trickery.
  * Servers have to update, and anyone using it under Wine (like us) will be officially screwed (I am building a new version of wine as an attempt to work around this, but not holding my breath).

What does this mean for our servers...

If I cant get wine working again, we will have to revert to a windows server again (BOO). This will make the job of maintaining the server a huge PITA again and may also drive the cost up from free to paying a monthly for a windows license (I will talk to the DC regarding this issue).

[CewHit76]

Wow... sounds like the beginning of the end to me... seems like they are trying to kill the mod? Either A, they want to force people into Standalone or B, have more control over the mod to prevent people from playing with it/modding it even further.

Damn.. luckily GTA V is just around the corner. Might also get some of us to take a second more closer look at Battlefield 4.

I wonder, will ACE be similarly affected as well?

[gnif]

ARMA2:OA has a Linux native dedicated server, which works great except for one API call (callExtension) which is required by DayZ/Epoch to use when talking to the Hive/Database, this forces us to use the windows version under wine. Since ACE does not use a hive/db we can use the native Linux version and is not an issue.

[CewHit76]

That's good news. Have been spending time reinstalling the games. In the process of copying over DayZ and the other mods.

[Juggy]

I didn't know Arma2 uses Gamespy aswell.. Arma 3 uses it too and they had to remove Gamespy from that already.. this all make a lot more sense now..

[CewHit76]

As far as I'm concerned, I could care less. Am done with Arma2. I've uninstalled it.