It should be noted that there are costs involved with running this service, and while some developers were still paying GameSpy to run their servers, many were not. There may even be a legal issue here as some server shutdowns to require 30 days notice. While server shutdowns are nothing news, many fans like to give a game a 'last hurrah' before being sent off to the great digital divide. While most of the functionality lost has to do with server browsing, the bigger issue here is that the servers were shutdown without notice. Many co-op titles like Neverwinter Nights, Hidden and Dangerous 2, SWAT 4, and Star Wars: Battlefront no longer had any multiplayer functionality - though some games do allow LAN or direct connection options. With that they shutdown a lot of multiplayer servers for several older PC games. Unfortunately it looks like the first thing the incoming regime did is what happens a lot in corporate takeovers, they trimmed the fat so to speak. GameSpy has recently come under new ownership by a company called Glu Mobile.

Swat 4 dedicated server