gamespy

Pretty sure they don't advertize the price because it likely depends on the contract. I'd expect it to be at the _very_ least in the tens of thousands; perhaps even in the six figures for major titles. Dunno. You'll have to "apply for developer access" and see what they offer you.

-me

OK I gave it a try, and the first thing they'd like to know in an email is the budget for the project.
I think I won't answer them, cause telling the truth about that would make the whole thing even more embarassing ;-)

Well I think a lobby server is something that can be handled by myself, but it would be nice to spare me that work.

Does anybody know another hoster like gamespy? (an affordable one)

Quote:

I think I won't answer them, cause telling the truth about that would make the whole thing even more embarassing ;-)

I would answer, and tell the truth. The worst thing that can happen is that they say "sorry, you can't afford us."

An indie matchmaker service as a business opportunity? Hmm...

Code for a lobby server (C#). You still need somewhere to host one, of course, and my code is not really tested. But it should give you some pointers at least.

A commercial lobbying system should probably support at least the following features:

1) User accounts with statistics.
2) Friends lists.
3) Host permission lists.
4) NAT punch-through introduction.
5) Global, per-game, and per-instance chat.
6) Usage statistics and reporting to developer.
7) Redundancy for failover and scalability.
8) Client versioning/updating redirection.
9) Community ratings system.

What am I forgetting?

Quote:

Original post by Bob Janova Code for a lobby server (C#). You still need somewhere to host one, of course, and my code is not really tested. But it should give you some pointers at least.

For some reason, that article doesn't show in Firefox (though it does in IE).