Frost Giant Studios has announced that the online functions of its debut RTS game Stormgate will be shutting down for the foreseeable future at the end of this month due to its partner being bought by an AI company.
Frost Giant Studios was founded in 2020 by former Blizzard developers Tim Morten and Tim Campbell who were previously leads on expansions for the likes of StarCraft 2 and Warcraft 3 (and my beloved, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, in Campbell's case). So with a pedigree like that, a RTS game was sure to follow, and after a very successful Kickstarter, Stormgate entered early access in 2024, with the full launch around a year later in August 2025. And, despite mixed reviews for the game, the devs pledged to support it for years to come.
However, less than a year after launching, it was announced on the Stormgate Discord server that the RTS title will be losing its offline features at the end of the month. As spotted by Delisted Games, a message released yesterday explains, "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."
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It's explained that "Stormgate will be patched so that it can be played offline, but online modes will not be available at that point." And, from the sounds of things, it isn't a given that the game will eventually come back online, as the post continues: "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."
Hathora has released a statement on its website discussing its acquisition by Fireworks AI, in which it also suggests that developers move their online services using its "exclusive transition partner," GameFabric. It says: "We know your live-ops cannot afford downtime. 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."
The company is offering a zero-downtime migration for this, but presently the developers of Stormgate have not mentioned if this is an option, however, some players have asked about it in the Discord server.
So, if the AI slop machine wasn't already content with ruining your social media, having a huge environmental impact, skyrocketing the cost of tech due to RAM shortages, and sneaking its way into games, we now have it to thank for a game losing its online servers.
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