I just read on RPS that Sierra (now owned by Activision/Blizzard) has decided to shut down the master servers of the following games :
1. Alien vs Predator 2
2. Arcanum
3. Caesar IV
4. Dark Reign 2
5. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom
6. Empire Earth
7. Empire Earth 2
8. Empire Earth: Age of Conquest
9. Ground Control
10. Ground Control2
11. Homeworld
12. Homeworld: Cataclysm
13. Nolf2
14. Red Baron
15. Sanity
16. Star Trek: Armada
17. SWAT3: EE
18. SWAT3: GOTY
19. The Incredible Machine
20. Tribes2
21. Vampire
Are they fucking kidding me? Closing servers for something that probably doesn't cost too much in comparaison of other games?
I'm sure some of you will be disappointed... And a lot of other gamers too. Seriously, Tribes 2 without multiplayer? AvP2 online is damn fun. And the Homeworlds?
I hate big editors more and more. They have the rights to do this, of course. "But they have no rights", for god's sake! When I buy a game I expect to be able to play in 10 years with the same feeling than before. Now... bleh, seeing this makes me sick.

The games industry is all about money. Sadly.

They oughtta lease out the servers w/ ads.. I mean, sure ads suck a dick, but it keeps the games alive, ya know

Yeah it sucks but honestly don't worry about it. The community will keep things running, like Battlezone's long-dead servers are clear but you can mod the game to include some community run servers. The same is for Jazz Jackrabbit and Tribes 1.

Ground Control, heh. Bought the game, but couldn't play it online because the serial number was already taken.
Publishers expect you not to play decade old games instead of whatever they've released that month. Stuff like this is merely a side-effect of that.

Star Trek: Armada and Vampire still had open servers? I thought those servers went under with WON.net...
At least you can still play them with Hamachi.

You all know Sierra is going down soon anyway, right?

Awww :( But sadly, it was expected to happen, keeping the serves up and running still costs time, power and people.
Ads (unobtrusive as possible please!) can work, if advertisers see some response ($$?) from them. They can even link to the companies own new titles: "Buy now! From the Activision/Blizzard store!"
Other than that, we can hope people will setup and run their own servers once the master is down.

How do you figure? They were just recently merged with Activision (as part of the Vivendi/Activision merger) at worst, Sierra the name might disappear, but the studios themselves will still be around.

It's possible to start your own Unreal master server, and it shouldn't be all that hard to build one for these games. All you need to do is listen for servers, and store what information they give you in a database, then give clients the information they request.
Of course, I'm assuming you all know how to write a simple TCP server and client...

People people, Sierra has been dead since 98. Vugames has been riding it's corpse much to the annoyance of fans for years. Now that Activision has bought them, it appears they've decided to sell the old IPs and studios. This and the fan forum closing may be signs it's already sold and we haven't been given the news yet.
This is GOOD news. I'm fed up with how VUgames treated that label. Either stop using it or put the classic IPs to good use. I would love to see Space Quest, Quest for Glory and Gabriel Knight given to someone who knows what they are doing.

Good news, for me. I'm sick and tired of this useless hype on the multiplayer as the future of gaming. Games are pretty much about stories, and atmosphere, and then all the rest...
If the future means to have games worlds disappearing after the commercial run on the package, well, the future won't have me....

I read this news earlier today and the first thing that popped into my mind was whether this could be an opportunity for GOG to make a deal to get the rights to sell some of these games.
There are some games on that list that should sell pretty well here at GOG, so maybe GOG could work out a deal to keep the servers running for a specified period of time in return for some sort of agreement to sell DRM free versions of the games. Activision/Blizzard would then just release a patch for their versions directing them to the GOG servers for online play.
This subject also brings me to a side point about GOG aquiring discontinued MMOGs such as Motor City Online or Earth & Beyond and charging $5.99/month for the MMOG, but the cost of a MMOG startup means that would be something to look at only after GOG becomes successful.

Either someone does not know what he is talking about, or 1992 DOS puzzle game had online multiplayer capabilities noone would even dream of those days. Having been playing TIM since 1996, I'd say the news is far more than somewhat inaccurate.