EA aquires BioWare/Pandemic Studios

General discussion on NWN scripting, expansions, and modules
Bargeld
PKer
Posts: 1249
Joined: Tue Dec 11, 2007 8:29 am

Re: EA aquires BioWare/Pandemic Studios

Post by Bargeld »

Similar to what you describe, maibi... I've had accounts with more than 5000 hours logged in this game and was 'Sysop' for about 10 years (technically, I am the only remaining sysop of the original Alpha Zone, Population: 0, but still running):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(computer_game)

The short story: Subspace was owned by Virgin Interactive Entertainment (VIE). It was in public beta for many years, until it was released. In less than 1 day, a crack to bypass the game CD made it into circulation. VIE went under and was sold to EA within 2 years of release, but the rights to the game ultimately ended up in the hands of Brilliant Digital Entertainment (BDE), still current owners. Cheating ran rampant due to lack of corporate support/updates. All corporate servers shut down after EA bought VIE. Shorty thereafter, Continuum was released by one of the creators of Kazaa (this was about the same time as Kazaa was in the limelight). Continuum was an exact replica of the original Subspace Client/server, but offered a number of enhancements, and most importantly, security updates to prevent cheat programs. It was written without access to the original Subspace source code. The most recent and 'final' version of continuum was released last year, and since then, cheats have still popped up, but the activity level of the community and different zone staffs manage to actively curb most cheating attempts.

The entire gaming community, the new client and server software, all updates and distributables, web sites, and all servers, etc. have been player owned/run since about 1998. Subspace (the rights to the name/game) is dead. Continuum lives on in a few key zones still, and has never had a legal confrontation regarding the similarity (it is EXACT) to the original game title and any copyright infringment. Neither the original source for Subspace, nor source for Continuum have been released. Strangely, the server software (ASSS) has been improved by a player created team of programmers and is used in many zones, instead of the 'out-of-the-box' continuum server.
Death Dealers ::DD::
Laufer - Gemetzel - Force - Little Fist - Egil - Torture - Hatshepsu - Nemesis - Hierophant - Supernaut - Flesh Hound - Insurrection - Antithesis - Dead of Winter - Volcanus 2000

Locked

Return to “NWN Discussion”