Date: 9 Feb 2010 Comments: 0

Quake game servers were the first to hit the online gaming crowd in 1996. Multiplayer online gaming was a new drug for gamers, where Unreal Tournament on dialup was as good as online gaming was. To some, it still is.

While playing COD now on our XBOX might seem normal, or a right, 15 years ago the whole idea of competing against a friend in another room via a network cable dragged between rooms was incredibly exciting. Shooting someone in a different part of the world, or even more incredible, someone in another country was an amazing buzz.

Since then, game servers have evolved, rapidly. At the crux of growth for online gaming, arguably, Counterstrike was at its peak. Thousands of gamers across the world would pit their wits against each other. Counter-Strike was the ultimate competitive game. In fact, watching people play COD is nothing compared to CS!

In 2003, Call of Duty hit shelves and was a massive success. As with all the first gameservers, there was no platform bias. The servers ran on Linux as well as Windows (although with the early Call of Duty series there was always a delay for Linux binaries!). Here, started a trend -Linux support was not included. And this was Much to the misery of seasoned Linux admins, and linux game server companies, such as INX gaming servers. There has always been the argument that Windows game servers are easier to administrate, which makes them more friendly to manage. But on the other hand, hosting game servers on Linux gives so much more freedom and scope!

It’s only fair when talking about game servers, that we mention Valve. While Valve receive a lot of criticism (usually because then they release software updates it can cause problems with game servers), they deserve an incredible amount of credit.

Let’s take a look at two leading publishers. EA / Dice only allows a few number of ‘trusted partners’ to host their game servers.

Valve on the other hand have always provided Linux and Windows support for their gameservers. From the early days of Counterstrike, to the mega popular release of Counter-Strike Source clanservers hosting. or TF2 and Left 4 Dead game servers.

So where now for the future of gameserver hosting? Speculation says gameserver will be obselete, as they are in two years. As long as Valve develop games on Windows and Linux, easy free control over the game files, gameserver hosts will never disappear. The tempation of playing on consoles with not help the number of PC gamers. Although expect game hosting to be around for another fourteen years.