Stormgate Loses Multiplayer After AI Company Acquires Gaming Server Provider Hathora

'AI' is coming for your online gaming servers next

Game developers may need contingency plans for multiplayer services as AI companies acquire gaming infrastructure providers, potentially affecting titles like Splitgate 2. You can't find RAM, you can't find storage, you can't find a GPU. But at least you can play the PC games you already own, right? Well, maybe not. Consumer PC parts aren't the only things being gobbled up by the "AI" industry. A Starcraft-inspired strategy game is shutting down its multiplayer servers because the hosting company got bought out for "AI." The game in question is Stormgate, a crowdfunded revival of the real-time strategy genre that has languished in the last decade or so. The developer Frost Giant Studios told its players on Discord (spotted by PC Gamer) that it would be unable to continue multiplayer access past the end of this month. The "game server orchestration partner" was bought by an AI company -- the developer's words, not mine -- which means that the multiplayer aspects of the game will have a "planned outage." The devs say the game will be patched for offline play, presumably including its single-player campaign mode and co-op modes, but "online modes will not be available at that point." They're hoping to bring back online play in a later update, but that'll depend on "finding a partner to support ongoing operations." That sounds like old-fashioned player-hosted games with lobbies aren't in the cards, at least not yet. Frost Giant's server provider is Hathora, which was bought by a company called Fireworks AI last month. Fireworks describes its offerings as "open-source AI models at blazing speed, optimized for your use case, scaled globally with the Fireworks Inference Cloud." So, yeah, Hathora's infrastructure will likely be used for yet more generative "AI." And according to GamesBeat, it's planning to shut down the game service aspect of its company completely. That means Stormgate probably isn't going to be the last game affected. Hathora also provides online services for Splitgate 2, among others. I'm contacting Hathora for comment and will update this story if I receive a response. Stormgate was met with excitement from strategy gamers who've been poorly served the last few years, aside from a few notable remakes and remasters. The development studio being formed by two Blizzard veterans certainly helped, as did the sci-fi setting, taking clear inspiration from Warhammer 40,000 just like Starcraft did back in the 90s. But the game landed with a bit of a thud late last year, and it's currently sitting at a "Mixed" rating on Steam. More recent reviews are "mostly negative," though none seem to be reacting to the shutdown news in particular. Stormgate is free to play, but its full Ashes of Creation single-player campaign costs $25. Gamers aren't thrilled about the way "AI" initiatives are carving out sections of the industry, making hardware unaffordable for players and filling up game stores with low-effort slop. The much-anticipated Steam Machine seems to be delayed due to the hardware issue, console prices are going up years after launch in an unprecedented reversal, and cheap devices are being scuppered just because the expense of the components makes them impossible to build. Nvidia, easily the most visible beneficiary of the "AI" bubble due to industrial sales, is trying to inject a generative "AI" filter into its newest gaming software while reportedly skipping any new consumer GPUs for the first time in decades. Gamers are, unsurprisingly, less than receptive. And none of that is even touching the broader social issues of "AI," the skyrocketing price of energy, the environmental impact. It sucks. That's it. It just sucks. If there's a lesson to be learned in this situation, it might be that smaller game projects need contingency plans, at least if they include a multiplayer component. Remote-hosted servers have become the norm for online multiplayer because they allow for more complex and managed gameplay, not to mention things like live services. But for games like this, it might be worth looking into old-fashioned player-to-player connections as a fallback when things go awry.

Hyped Steam game is losing multiplayer after AI company takes servers

Stormgate, a game made by former StarCraft 2 developers, aimed to "boldly advance" real-time strategy games by lowering the barrier to entry in an otherwise inaccessible genre. Three years after its release into early access, however, Stormgate is being pulled offline. Unlike most games facing a potential shutdown, Stormgate's shift has nothing to do with success or player count. Instead, it's the result of a server provider being taken over by an AI company that doesn't want to share its resources. As Delisted Games reported, developer Frost Giant Studios announced the news via Discord in late March. "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," the bulletin reads. Hathora also powers server infrastructure for other games, like Splitgate 2 -- but currently, those services are frozen. After 90 days, the server platforms will be pulled permanently, Hathora says. Stormgate is a free-to-play strategy game that was once described by Rock Paper Shotgun as the lovechild of StarCraft and Warcraft, with an emphasis on the type of flashy, Blizzard-like storytelling. A Kickstarter campaign for the project quickly raised over $2.3 million back in 2023, so the anticipation behind it was high. Once it was actually playable, however, Stormgate received mixed reviews on Steam. While some fans appreciated that the developers took feedback seriously, others believed that the experience resembled StarCraft a little too much. But even players who reviewed it positively agreed that Stormgate did not live up to its promised hype. Hathora has been acquired by Fireworks AI, a company started by people who formerly worked in Meta's AI division. Fireworks AI serves 10,000 customers with functions like AI-led code assistance, agentic systems, and conversational bots. But as AI usage proliferates, so has the demand for computing power. Those calculations rely on network and cloud services such as Hathora's to actually process all the data. Stormgate's developers say that the game will be patched so that it is playable offline, and that they hope to restore full functionality in another future update. "But this work will be dependent on Frost Giant finding a partner to support ongoing operations," the announcement reads. Subscribe to our newsletter for smart gaming industry coverage Curious how AI acquisitions can strand multiplayer games? Subscribe to the newsletter for in-depth coverage and analysis of industry shifts - from server takeovers that impacted Stormgate to broader impacts on game operations. Get Updates By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime. Regardless of the game's current quality, Stormgate's multiplayer situation is an unusual one. It is also the latest example of AI advances diverting resources from the world of video games. As some gamers know all too well, AI usage has driven up prices for computer chips needed to build PCs and power consoles. Frost Giant's tentative wording, alongside the ever-growing AI boom, makes it plausible that Stormgate is just the start of another awful trend for the video game industry.

Stormgate Adding Offline Mode After Server Provider Ditches It For AI

Stormgate, a free-to-play RTS game developed by some former Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 devs, announced that its online multiplayer provider has been bought by an AI company and it will lose access to its servers. This is a problem for Stormgate, as it's an always-online game. The devs are now working to patch in an offline mode. On March 31, as reported by Delisted Games, Stormgate developer Frost Giant announced some "unfortunate news" in the game's official Discord server. According to the studio, which launched Stormgate back in 2024, the game's "server orchestration partner," Hathora, has been bought up by an AI company. As speculated by Delisted and others, this likely means that Hathora's server and computing resources will be applied to supporting AI services instead of online multiplayer. It's fun to learn about a new way in which AI is going to ruin everything. This is bad news for Stormgate as the RTS is an always-online game, and at the end of April, it will no longer be able to connect to servers, which, if things stayed as they are, would prevent players from playing the game completely. Thankfully, Frost Giant says the game will be "patched so that it can be played offline" before that happens. But online multiplayer modes will no longer be available. "We hope to restore online play in a future patch," said the devs on Discord. "But this work will be dependent on Frost Giant finding a partner to support ongoing operations." The lack of an offline mode has been something the community around Stormgate has complained about for some time now. Frost Giants has claimed in the past that it was planning to add an offline mode, but it just wasn't a "main focus." Seems like it has suddenly become a main focus! "We’re very grateful to our community of players, and we will post another update as more information is available, including more info about how offline mode works, and whether we get any patches out before the server wind down," said Frost Giant. "Thank you for your support." Kotaku has contacted Frost Giant for more information. This news is just one more example of why video game companies need to build offline modes into their games, no matter how dedicated they are to supporting a game with updates for years to come. Even if only part of the game remains playable after the servers go down or get ripped away from you by an AI company, some kind of offline mode can keep the game around for years, let you sell it on storefronts long after the servers go offline, and provide the community with a game that could be expanded upon with future mods and fan-created updates. The alternative to not supporting offline at launch is that you have to put the mode together quickly after something like this happens.

Stormgate is Losing its Online Multiplayer Modes After its Server Partner was Bought by an AI Company

Stormgate, the Warcraft-inspired real-time strategy game from Frost Giant Studios that started with incredible potential after an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign has just hit a major bump in a road that's been littered with bumps since it launched back in August 2025. The game will be losing its online multiplayer modes, simply because it is losing its server orchestration partner, Hathora, after Hathora was acquired by an AI-focused company, Fireworks AI. There are already examples of AI and, more specifically, Generative AI (GenAI) taking jobs from developers, but this is seemingly the first example of AI/GenAI taking games (or at least game modes) away from players. First reported by Delisted Games, developer Frost Giant Studios shared a message in its Stormgate Discord server, telling its community that it will no longer be able to run servers for Stormgate's online modes, because those servers are being repurposed to serve the needs of Hathora's new parent company. "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," Frost Giant begins. "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." The studio adds that it is hopeful it can bring the game's online modes back in a future update, but it would first have to find another server orchestration partner to host those matches. We've already seen the AI/GenAI industry drive up the cost of memory and cause a crisis across the tech industry, we've seen it drive major shifts in the stock market for video game companies (even if those shifts were based on false beliefs), we've seen it take jobs from developers as previously mentioned, and we've seen it cause controversy after controversy among game developers and players. Now, its insatiable need for servers has forced a game to do away with its online modes for the time being, and interestingly, Stormgate seemingly isn't the only game impacted by this. A report from Silicon Angle also identifies that Hathora ran servers for Splitgate 2 and Predecessor, on top of Stormgate. It'll be interesting to see if other smaller-scale multiplayer titles, or even potentially some larger-scale titles, begin to get impacted by its server partners opting to focus more on the AI industry over video games moving forward.