Comrade Gets Caught In The Crossfire

Squabble, squabble, copyright, squabble, squabble.

As all social gatherings are bound to devolve to given the right mix of money, opinion and greed, even those involving in-game chat and social networking programs can’t seem to get along.

XFire, that darling program that allows you to see which of your gaming friends is online as well as what they’re playing so that you can join them, is widely used by online gamers the world over and recently declared that it would be closely tied to the PS3. XFire also has a patent on its software. XFire apparently is also very protective of its patent and freaks out at the merest mention of a market competitor.

GameSpy, the ubiquitous multiplayer perk provider, has launched their version of a social interface with Comrade. XFire’s complaint is that Comrade’s “Buddy Sync” feature infringes on their intellectual property because it allows gamers to aggregate their friend lists from a variety of chat progams such as AOL, and…bum..bum..bummmmm….XFire. Apparently XFire doesn’t take kindly to potentially being cut out of the equation and has thrown a bit of a tantrum by suing IGN (GameSpy’s parent company) and requesting a restraining order on the release of Battlefield 2142. Insert laughter here.

The XFire case seems tenuous at best, and the GameSpot article makes a smart comment in mentioning that if Comrade is at fault, then so must be Trillian, another chat software aggregator. I find it amusing that XFire doesn’t seem overly concerned wth Trillian or aggregators in general, only because they do not wrap XFire into the fold.

Via | GameSpot