Usually, a game losing its multiplayer support is the end of the story, but Star Wars Battlefront II now looks to be the exception to that rule. GOG has announced that, through a partnership with Disney, it has brought the game’s multiplayer servers back online almost 12 years after the game’s first release.
As active players naturally wane over time, developers often have to crunch the numbers to see if it's time to make that hard decision and take a game offline. That wasn’t exactly the case for Star Wars Battlefront II, which lost its multiplayer support back in 2014.
Battlefront II, not to be confused with EA’s upcoming game of the same name, was one of many games that lost multiplayer support when GameSpy powered down its hosting services three years back.
GOG was able to grab the source code for the original game and worked with Disney to bring the multiplayer servers back to life. Furthermore, the revival extends beyond just the GOG Galaxy version of the game to reach Steam as well, enabling players of the classic Star Wars Battlefront II to play together despite their purchasing platform of choice.
And according to a forum post spotted by Ars Technica, Battlefront II might not be the only affected game to have its multiplayer reinvigorated. In response to a question about other GameSpy-powered games, one GOG team member noted that the company is open to reviving other titles, though that’s often easier said than done.
“I think that's a tough question to answer because there are so many factors involved. I know that for BF2 we had access to the source code and Disney's full support which made it possible, and that's just the tip of the iceberg,” reads the post. “I think that given the right opportunity, most [GOG users] would love to see it happen more often though.”