Halo 2’s PC Multiplayer Shutting Down February 15th
For those few fans of the PC version of Halo 2 that still play the online multiplayer, I have some bad news for you. On February 15th 343 Industries will be shutting off the multiplayer servers for the game. The reason, according to the developer, is that the population peaks at only about 20 players or less, meaning that it’s just not worth the money to keep the servers up and running.
I won’t lie, I’ve always held a bit of resentment towards the PC version of this game due to the fact that even though it was on the PC it still required an Xbox Live Gold account. I didn’t want to have to pay to play online multiplayer games on my PC when most other games at that time had it for free. Maybe that’s why I was surprised to hear that there were at least 20 people still willing to pay essentially a subscription fee, at least in part because of an 8 year old game.
I have to wonder if 343 Industries really will force people off the server if there are still people playing on there come Feb. 15th? After all, many people remember that when the original Xbox Live was scheduled to shut down there was an active community that kept their Xbox’s on for up to a month, keeping a constant connection to the server, all in an attempt to force it to stay up. Of course, perhaps the one thing that might keep that from happening could be a mandatory Windows update that forces a reboot of the computer, assuming that the company doesn’t just pull the power plug out of the wall.
