Sierra to Shut Down Starsiege: Tribes in August, GarageGames to the Rescue?

A recent notice posted to Sierra Entertainment's website lists Starsiege: Tribes amongst a list of games set to lose multiplayer functionality as of next month.

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A recent notice posted on Sierra Entertainment's website lists Dynamix's groundbreaking multiplayer shooter Starsiege: Tribes amongst a list of games set to lose multiplayer functionality as of next month.

The games, which include Papyrus' NASCAR Racing, Field & Stream Trophy Hunting 4, and Field & Stream Trophy Bass 5, will be discontinued on August 16. A full list of the affected titles can be found here.

Cries to preserve the Starsige server have erupted from the waning Tribes community, with devoted fans brainstorming solutions in a message board thread on TribalWar, a news site which once exclusively covered the Tribes series.

Founding GarageGames partner and former Dynamix employee Rick Overman apparently posted this message in response to the outpouring: "How many of you would be interested in GarageGames getting involved? --Rick," indicating that the company may attempt to save the game from obscurity.

When Dynamix was shut down in 2001 by Sierra, several employees founded GarageGames, including Overman, Jeff Tunnell, Tim Gift, and Mark Frohnmayer. The studio has since gone on to create the Torque Game Engine, a modified version of the Tribes 2 engine marketed to independent developers.

Shacknews has contacted GarageGames for comment on the issue, but has not yet received a reply.

From The Chatty
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    July 19, 2007 2:51 PM

    How old is this game? Let it go already.

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      July 19, 2007 2:54 PM

      I don't know. I think it'd be pretty cool if they left a server up. The original Tribes was fucking fantastic. Man.

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        July 19, 2007 3:16 PM

        It really was. I played the hell out of it back then.

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          July 19, 2007 3:30 PM

          It's a shame that Tribes 2 was such a let down compared to the original IMO. They didn't really need to change anything whatsoever, just update the graphics. Hell. If you took that exact same game and just redid the models and added some hi-rez textures, I would pick that up in a heart beat. Probably one of my all time favorite games.

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            July 19, 2007 10:06 PM

            Tribes 2 is a great game now. choose your gametype flavor and play. In some ways its actually better than T1, but still I would hate to see the master server go down for T1. T1 and T2 are awesome.

            The whole nerf the speed on release is what really left a bitter taste with the T2 release. plus the high hardware requirements and bugs out of box. Dynamix really pushed the threshold for hardware at the time.

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      July 19, 2007 3:18 PM

      If I could revisit all my days of Quake and Quake 2 MP on my computer now..with some sort of cpu slow-downer-app and have the same amount of fun these guys are still having with Tribes...I'd be all over that shit.

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        July 19, 2007 9:15 PM

        Uhm, Q1 and Q2 don't need any CPU slow-down thing...they're based on frames per second and will run normally on the fastest processors out right now (my processor doesn't qualify as that...but its decent (Athlon 64X2 4800+) and it runs Quake1/Quakeworld and Quake2 perfectly fine...Quake3 runs perfectly fine as well (otherwise how would I play Generations Arena)).

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        July 19, 2007 10:20 PM

        I miss the Quake 1 & 2 days. Pure fun.

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      July 19, 2007 9:13 PM

      A lot of people still love a lot of old games and want to play them because they offer things that newer games don't.

      If any really fucking old game NEEDS to die; its Counter Strike!

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      July 20, 2007 8:16 AM

      the game was so ground breaking in so many ways it is mind boggling, and there is nothing, no game sense that has been able to duplicate or match the feeling you get of speed as you ski through levels in Tribes 1. Killing Tribes 1 is almost like killing an entire genre of game.

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