“The main server that runs the patch I decided to run in a location in France,” he says. In fact, Dallas Smith hosts the servers that run the current multiplayer patches, and he does so out of his own pocket. Whatever the case, an act of alien necromancy could now be performed, and the game rose from its grave with a new master server browser. We still don't know if this was an official act of sharing, or a leak, or just a mistake, but the code was reportedly taken down swiftly afterwards. Modifying the game was made possible by the developer, Monolith Productions, who released the source code for a brief period in 2002. There have been some really dedicated people working on this game during the years, and thanks to all their help it is still up and running.” “Thankfully ‘The_One’ and ‘Herr_Alien’ put their two minds together and created the Saviour patch. “A lot of people were thinking it’s the end of the world, and we can ditch the game to the grave,” says Ville, another contributor to AvP2’s revival (Ville asked me to withhold his last name due to privacy concerns). Although you'll need to own a copy of the game (some can be found floating around on eBay or Amazon) and apply some unofficial patchwork first.ĪvP2 died an undignified death, but it was resuscitated by players who rallied to keep one of their favourite games alive. Today you can still join a multiplayer game to hear the metallic pitter-patter of feet across steel grates, and see a xenomorph’s secondary mandible emerge like a murderous matryoshka doll, ready to impale the skull of an unsuspecting marine. Yet, 10 years after the heart of AvP2’s multiplayer was ripped out, acidic green lifeblood still trickles through the game.

'People genuinely thought it would be the end.” “People made tribute videos and 'last hurrah' sort of matches,' says Dallas Smith, an electromechanical engineer and long-time player. The master server browser going down was almost an apocalyptic event for the players. By the end of the year, Sierra itself was shuttered. Aliens Versus Predator 2 was one of them. Within a few months Sierra announced it would be shutting down the servers for 21 of its games. Then in early 2008, Vivendi Games, parent company to the shooter’s publisher Sierra Entertainment, merged with Activision. No dark corner offered sanctuary, cloaked predators disemboweled marines, and marines surrounded themselves with thickets of spider mines, and, all the while, alien players crawled through the vents.

For seven years, the multiplayer servers pulsed with life.

It was an asymmetrical first-person shooter that stood out when it was released in 2001. Aliens Versus Predator 2 pitted colonial marines against predators against aliens.

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