Stormgate's Online Features Killed by AI Company; Going Offline Soon, For Now

Published 3 weeks, 3 days ago by

Stormgate's multiplayer modes and online features are being discontinued at the end of April.

The move comes after their server partner, Hathora, is getting rid of their game hosting infrastructure. The company was purchased by "Fireworks AI" and is now stating that they recommend GameFabric by Nitrado as a replacement for their services. So, AI kills multiplayer gaming? Honestly, with all the AI stuff going on, even that wasn't on my AI bingo card for 2026. The unfortunate moves means in a few weeks, Stormgate will no longer have multiplayer functionality.

The Future of Stormgate

The goal is to patch in offline functionality and down the line, once Frost Giant finds a partner to help support their ongoing operations, they will be able to restore online play.

Quote From Stormgate Discord

We have some unfortunate news. I’ll get straight to it:

  • Our game server orchestration partner, Hathora, has been purchased by an AI company, and they are winding down their service at the end of April. This will create a planned outage for Stormgate’s multiplayer modes.

  • Stormgate will be patched so that it can be played offline, but online modes will not be available at that point.

  • We hope to restore online play in a future patch, but this work will be dependent on Frost Giant finding a partner to support ongoing operations.

We’re very grateful to our community of players, and we will post another update as more information is available, including more info about how offline mode works, and whether we get any patches out before the server wind down. Thank you for your support, The Frost Giant and Community Development team.

Nitrado's GameFabric's website has instructions on how companies can transition off Hathora and promises zero-downtime migrations with the GameFabric team ready to help all customers. We're uncertain if Stormgate has reached out but stating they are looking for a new partner still for operations makes us think they are keeping their options open and possibly looking to save some money; The game hasn't been doing very well according to SteamDB.

RTS is a very difficult genre to have a large player base, but a peak of 82 players during March doesn't look great for the longevity of the game. In my opinion, winding down multiplayer service is an easy way for them to sunset the multiplayer hosting costs for the game, so they can focus on other game development efforts and it would not surprise me to see this be the overall outcome.

Have you played Stormgate? Sad to see it lose multiplayer at the end of the month? Let us know in the comments below!

Similar_Content
AI
Remove Ads - Go Premium
Related_Articles
Steam's Next Fest Feb 2024 is Here: Opinions on New Demos
2 years, 2 months ago

Steam's Next Fest Feb 2024 is Here: Opinions on New Demos

Stormgate
Stormgate October Update - Alpha Test Recap, Infernal Host Faction, Rollback Netcode Success
2 years, 6 months ago

Stormgate October Update - Alpha Test Recap, Infernal Host Faction, Rollback Netcode Success

Stormgate 4
Stormgate Becomes First RTS To Implement Rollback Netcode
2 years, 6 months ago

Stormgate Becomes First RTS To Implement Rollback Netcode

Stormgate 3

// join_the_conversation

Sign in to share your thoughts, vote on comments, and connect with the community.

Sign in Create account

Comments

  • Wasnt Stormgate the RTS that a lot of SC2 pros jumped ship to? Or was that something else? Surprised it met such fate.

    Staff

    • Yeah it had a load of ex-Blizzard folks from the Starcraft team on it. It never really attracted an audience though (clearly haha). From everyone I talked to who tried it, they weren't very fond of it, found it clunky. I never had a big interest in the game myself because... RTS. I'd play a Starcraft 3 because of nostalgia, but damn do I hate RTS and how mechanically skilled you have to be to win. And if you don't have a massive playbase, it won't be possible for the noobs to get a 50/50 winrate so skill-based matchmaking ain't gonna be happening very well.

      It's just a genre that requires a titan behind it to funnel the players into it.

      • Yeah, I used to love RTS - Starcraft, Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, but those days are long gone.

        I do like watching e-sports of those games, but not playing them myself :)

        But it is true that to break into this genre you need something more special. Starcraft has a world-wide community and Korea basically has it as a "national sport" so even in its current state it still has some traction.

        Difficult to achieve with any new RTS. Imho it would have to be a "flavor tie-in" first and foremost, backed by good gameplay, for any RTS to make it big nowadays.

        Staff

        • Oh yes, I couldn't agree more, watching RTS is so great. I miss the big Starcraft 2 days with just insane tournaments almost every weekend. I kinda hated it when Korea took over the entire scene because everything just got so much more painful to watch. The skill was way better, but damn was that a great way to have a bad sleeping schedule (I prefer watching live stuff live, always).

          I do wonder if we'll see RTS grow at some point again. It would have to have a really killer single-player campaign just to get the player numbers up, and then you need to have fun multiplayer stuff outside of the main game.

          I'm not familiar enough with Stormgate to know if they did this, but they really should have contracted people from the custom maps community in Starcraft to come build amazing experiences. I know their custom map builder wasn't even a year old yet, but anything strong that coulda been made or ported over could have been a reason for people to come try it out. Really leaning into a platform aspect could have been strong; Some of the best live games turn themselves into platforms.

          See Fortnite's custom content maker, even though the game itself is strong, people love custom experiences. Roblox is huge because its just a custom experience engine. RTS needs to dive into it first and foremost as a custom content engine.