Rumors have circulated that the popular Mac-only online gaming service GameRanger is in the process of being acquired by Mac game publisher Aspyr Media. Nothing is further from the truth, GameRanger’s founder told MacCentral.
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“No, GameRanger isn’t being acquired by Aspyr,” stated GameRanger founder Scott Kevill in a recent interview with MacCentral.
GameRanger is an online gaming system developed exclusively for the Macintosh. By downloading a modestly sized client application and setting up a free account, users can log on and chat with each other, join and host online games, and connect to master servers for popular games like Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament as well.
The GameRanger/Aspyr connection seems to be more wishful thinking on the part of rumormongers than anything based in fact. Kevill has no explanation for the rumors, in any case. The Perth, Australia-based developer told MacCentral that there hasn’t been any news from him recently that might support such rumors. In fact, there’s been blessedly little news about GameRanger at all since Kevill began focusing on the creation of a Mac OS X-compatible version of the service, still in development.
First launched in July, 1999 with support for less than a dozen Mac games, GameRanger has grown in leaps and bounds — the service now sports dangerously close to 80,000 members and supports almost 90 popular commercial, shareware and freeware multiplayer Mac games, including several titles published by Aspyr Media.
“We’re excited to read about the rumor, and that would be big news indeed,” said Aspyr vice president of marketing Jeff Baietto.
After a dramatic pause, Baietto added “The rumor is not true, though. We’re very supportive of Scott Kevill’s efforts with GameRanger and we certainly look forward to working with him for future support of our games. Aspyr Media understands the importance of online gaming, and that’s why we support efforts to make our games compatible with GameRanger and our own service, AspyrWorld.”
The AspyrWorld service is an outgrowth of the HMS Freeverse system developed by Freeverse Software. AspyrWorld was introduced with the release of iPuppet Presents: Colin’s Classic Cards, a multiplayer-capable collection of card games developed by Freeverse and published by Aspyr late last year.