|
On April 01 2026 01:57 Jeremy Reimer wrote:
Yeah, that's the official end of Stormgate.
if Frost Giant was still a thing and had any money whatsoever, they could patch the game to use a different orchestration provider. It wouldn't be simple, but it would be possible.
But there isn't anybody who still works there, and there is no money to even pay for a contractor to make the changes.
RIP Stormgate. You were never good, but you tried.
Yep, they wouldn't post this if they had any budget left.
They would post something like "We're moving to another platform". Or nothing at all.
BTW they are still selling MTX. A month before the end. If this is not malicious, I don't know what is.
|
Austin Hudelson in the discord says they're focusing on a p2p solution ... Claude Code (my guess) to the rescue!
|
On April 01 2026 04:40 townhouse wrote:
Austin Hudelson in the discord says they're focusing on a p2p solution ... Claude Code (my guess) to the rescue!
That's crazy to even say that. P2P server solutions are difficult to make work properly at the best of times, but for an RTS, with the high number of units to keep track of, it sounds insane. You can't just send all the unit info over the Internet, so normally the server just accepts kb/mouse inputs and runs a simulation which it sends out to all players (Stormgate adds a rollback netcode option on top of this to compensate for poor latency, but that doesn't change the fact that the server has to run a simulation of the game state)
So... do you just pick a player and run the simulation on their computer? That would give one player essentially zero ping and lag, and double the lag for the other player.
It also would cost far more money to reengineer the Stormgate code to handle P2P than it would to simply switch server providers.
Also, they still rely on another third party service, pragma.gg, to handle everything involving the online aspects of the game: user logins, accounts, matchmaking, leaderboards, etc. Are they going to rewrite all this code from scratch as well, so that it supports P2P?
And where are they going to find the money to do all this development work? I suppose it all hangs on Tim finding a "partner". Any day now!
|
# of units doesn't factor in, with lockstep you're just sending the player commands back-and-forth. Hathora servers basically just acted as a go-between. moving to peer-to-peer while definitely not trivial isn't out of the question, given enough CC tokens & elbow grease.
reading between the lines, pragma would get the axe and you'd have to create your own custom games (which would rely on steam's services somehow)
|
I love how some people on Discord are either
- still hoping for a comeback
- blaming the players for "killing the game" (even as far as to blame one of the biggest content creators that's been there for years lol)
- insulting and fighting each other
Where's a Spartak when you need one ?
|
As usual. Criticizing a game from the start and offering solutions is bad.
Pretending the game is fine and ignoring problems is good.
The ironic part is they won't get it. They will move on to the other game's Discord server with the same behaviour.
Good thing is good game devs don't listen to guys on Discord, because they actually know how to make a game, so I don't think SG echo-chamber situation would repeat itself with any good game anytime soon.
|
On April 01 2026 06:36 townhouse wrote:
# of units doesn't factor in, with lockstep you're just sending the player commands back-and-forth. Hathora servers basically just acted as a go-between. moving to peer-to-peer while definitely not trivial isn't out of the question, given enough CC tokens & elbow grease.
Right, but if you're still doing lockstep, and you want to do peer-to-peer, then you have to run the game state simulation on one of the two players' computers. Which gives that player zero ping and the other player double the ping. How would that be fun for anybody?
reading between the lines, pragma would get the axe and you'd have to create your own custom games (which would rely on steam's services somehow)
This all sounds like a lot of work for a failed game owned by a company that has no money. I suppose it's admirable to even be considering it, simply to preserve the game for historical purposes.
|
game state simulation is run on both computers - you're literally playing on your opponent's computer as well as your own. they stay in sync due to integer math being deterministic (so using fixed-point arithmetic instead of floating point), and careful coding.
this is how brood war (and SC2 minus the p2p) work. so on liquipedia when you see 5.49
as Zergling's speed, it's an integer masquerading as a floating point
|
On April 01 2026 07:07 townhouse wrote:
game state simulation is run on both computers - you're literally playing on your opponent's computer as well as your own. they stay in sync due to integer math being deterministic (so using fixed-point arithmetic instead of floating point), and careful coding.
this is how brood war (and SC2 minus the p2p) work. so on liquipedia when you see 5.49
as Zergling's speed, it's an integer masquerading as a floating point
I didn't know that! That's interesting. So in the case of Brood War, is Zergling speed measured internally as an integer multiple of some sort of small unit of time?
|
in brood war it's based on the tick-rate, which is a 42ms delay between logical frames, or ~24 frames per second. so every 42ms (on fastest speed), a logical frame is executed (basically any frame where game state changes), and the Zergling moves 5.49 pixels (based on a 640×480 screen resolution per Claude).
sc2 uses a time-based model, but i'm less sure how that works since i chose bw's frame-based model when dinking around with my own rts (since i found it easier to reason about and also bw is the goat)
|
Wow! It's really shutting down? That is a shame. I still wish the teams would collab with zero space team and just combine efforts to work on one game. Both games have pros and cons the other didn't and might make a nice synergy. But as of right now, I'm not hopeful for that project either...
|
not sure if it's shutting down shut down, they are probably looking for another server provider. Still confused why it's being kept alive tbh.
|
On April 01 2026 09:19 ETisME wrote:
not sure if it's shutting down shut down, they are probably looking for another server provider. Still confused why it's being kept alive tbh.
From the announcement:
On March 31, 2026 Gobsmack wrote:
* 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.
If they were going to migrate to another server provider, they would have just said they were doing that, not that there would be a "planned outage". And they wouldn't have said that "restoring online play" would require Frost Giant finding a partner to support ongoing operations.
Also, they don't have to look for another server provider. From Hathora's website:
Hathora wrote:
To ensure a safe harbor for your multiplayer games, Hathora has selected GameFabric by Nitrado as the best solution for its existing customers and its exclusive transition partner.
GameFabric offers a simple and secure migration path for all Hathora customers. We provide a direct, white-glove upgrade path to a 20-year proven, enterprise-grade infrastructure. Your existing Docker-native workflows map seamlessly to GameFabric, ensuring your transition is swift, supported, and risk-free.
But they can't do that, because they are out of money and have been for a while. Perhaps they had prepaid for Hathora for a while, or maybe they had a sweet discount deal that is going away, or maybe Tim Morten was paying the server expenses out of pocket.
Or, and this is just speculation on my part, maybe the Hathora announcement was convenient for Frost Giant because of its timing.
Frost Giant's SEC report from last year was posted on May 1, 2025. That would mean they would have to post their next SEC filing on May 1, 2026. This would expose the fact that the company is completely out of money, and still has that $2 million loan to Silicon Valley Bank to pay off.
Maybe Tim Morten is secretly planning to wind down the company before this date, so he doesn't have to write another SEC report. Or maybe he's hoping he can put it off somehow, or do it out of public view so that he can still pretend that Frost Giant is a real company.
I say this because Hathora's decision to close their servers was recent, but not that recent. On archive.org, it shows that on March 5th, the Hathora website said "Our platform will be shutting down on May 5th, 2026." It linked to a blog post dated March 4th. That was nearly a month ago.
Clearly, there were very angry reactions by some of their customers. That's why when you go to hathora.dev today, it says: "the Hathora platform is frozen with immediate effect and will permanently shut down after ninety (90) days, at which point all support and administration will cease." They don't say 90 days starting when, but 90 days is a lot longer than "end of April".
So why exactly did Gobsmack announce today that the online modes for Stormgate are shutting down at the end of April? And why didn't he use this revised 90 day figure?
Also, I'm sorry, why is it Gobsmack who has to announce the Stormgate servers are shutting down? Why can't Tim Morten do that?
|
On April 01 2026 06:08 Jeremy Reimer wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2026 04:40 townhouse wrote:
Austin Hudelson in the discord says they're focusing on a p2p solution ... Claude Code (my guess) to the rescue! That's crazy to even say that. P2P server solutions are difficult to make work properly at the best of times, but for an RTS, with the high number of units to keep track of, it sounds insane. ZeroSpace uses P2P with one player's computer hosting the game. It is not ideal of course but I didn't see people say ZS is unplayable because of that, so it is better than nothing.
|
On April 01 2026 06:38 Gargonus wrote:
I love how some people on Discord are either
- still hoping for a comeback
- blaming the players for "killing the game" (even as far as to blame one of the biggest content creators that's been there for years lol)
- insulting and fighting each other
Where's a Spartak when you need one ?
Yeah that discord server was very much in denial back then even.
Also why announce that critical Info on discord first by a community mod instead of an official statement from the owners?
Feels kind of weak.
|
is there a chance this is an april fools joke? Check the date.
And if it's not... why announce it on this date? And where is Tim Morten? Why hasn't he said anything if the servers are shutting down?
|
Usually I dislike the social media panics where people need to be available 24/7 on all kinds of rumors and updates, but yeah... Assuming this is true and SG is winding down, it feels like it should be Tim writing at least some sort of bittersweet "we tried our best, it wasn't enough" type of update that clearly states the upcoming changes and clarifies what remains available and all that.
It wasn't great interaction post-release either, but this feels like an even more clear-cut moment where some sort of communication is necessary.
|
Tims very long silence tells me he wants to distance himself from this complete failure as much as possible.
His series of linked in blogs were more pitches to future employers then any reflecting on past events.
He walked away from SG months ago.
|
On April 01 2026 18:10 Gorsameth wrote:
Tims very long silence tells me he wants to distance himself from this complete failure as much as possible.
His series of linked in blogs were more pitches to future employers then any reflecting on past events.
He walked away from SG months ago.
what about tim campbell? is he still with frost giant? I remember hearing months ago iirc he was like overseeing gobsmack community updates no?
|
I still had a lot of fun with Stormgate and would have been happy if they continued development. I think I played a couple 2v2 matches on the PTR otherwise I haven't played since its "launch" last August. I checked out a few of the most recent tournaments and it did feel pretty stale though, despite the big patch.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
