The final Crysis 2 multiplayer server was shut down by EA back in October 2018. This was a prolonged date with the first GameSpy shutdowns taking place since way back in 2014. Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142’s multiplayer servers also met with a similar fate.
Even though its a sort of legal grey area in a lot of respects, it’s very tricky to play these games in a legitimate way. The Battlefield Revive project was an attempt to bring online a number of private servers for people to enjoy the games. EA shut down the Revive project’s servers in 2018.
Crysis 2, like BF2 and BF2142, also had its servers shut down during the death throes of GameSpy, EA’s choice for its server host. At the time, it was reported that EA was attempting to find a new host service to transition its game servers, but it was unsuccessful.
EA regularly shuts down and clears out old multiplayer servers, the reason being that supporting these games with less than 1% of their company-wide player base is not economically viable.
While the 2014 GameSpy shutdown did clear out old titles like Skate It for the Nintendo DS and Sim City Creator for the Wii (does anyone remember these?), many popular fan-favorites like Command and Conquer, Battlefield and Battlefront for console and PC also had their servers gutted.
This Crysis multiplayer server is a similar attempt to bring Crysis online again. At the moment the server has been running for a couple of months and is based in France – if you want to play in the US, you’ll need to deal with the less-than-ideal ping.
While it is likely the server will suffer the same fate of the Revive project and other attempts to bring the games back online in the past, if you want to relive the intense mayhem of a Crysis 2 multiplayer Instant Action you can do so for the time being.
Apparently the server isn’t too difficult to use, though you can’t use an ordinary Steam version of Crysis 2 to go online, as the game freaks out when it realizes GameSpy is gone with the wind.
Crysis 2 multiplayer was considered pretty good – although it had toned down some of the crazier aspects of the first game, it was still like a more beautiful Call of Duty with some futuristic elements before CoD had ever really gone there.
