Ok first off, This is unofficial because I do not have permission form LC or anyone else in Gametap staff and I am not staff myself. Seems a few regulars and myself have seen in the Help forum about 500 people asking "Where did the client go?" so I think it's time we put up a thread saying "This happened so please stop asking." Simply put, this is what happened:

Quote: eagleflies14 Long story short: Gametap was owned my Time Warner (Cartoon Network, CNN etc.) They decided to drop Gametap from their services (or something like that). Soon after that European website developer Metaboli signed Gametap to work with them (or under them, something like that).

That was paraphrased from another thread but it is from my own fingers. Now some people would still ask "That doesn't explain why the client is gone." Well, to me it does. Metaboli (which I'm told offline) is Gametap's "Parent Company." Metaboli, as a company, decided to scrap the client in favor of the system they already had, which is the web interface. If you don't believe me, take a look at the Metaboli website

EDIT: As of October 7, 2009 (based on this thread) GameTap is prototyping a Tray Icon. Seems like it will be their version of the old client. I highly suggest you keep up on that thread.

Regulars and staff, feel free to correct me because I might have (more like most likely) made a mistake somewhere.

LC, you should make a sticky about this like your free games FAQ.

And from my understanding, Metaboli took over the management and Time Warner Inc./Turner Entertainment remains an equity investor.

You're right though it doesn't answer any questions about where the client went. Other than asking users to infer from Metaboli's page that we're using some of their Tech now. And honestly if 6 months later people haven't figured that out yet, this post isn't going to spur that. (i.e. we need to be more blunt.)

tsrblke2 wrote: And honestly if 6 months later people haven't figured that out yet, this post isn't going to spur that. (i.e. we need to be more blunt.)

Got a good point there. Thank you for the feedback. I'll revise the OP and mention that GT is using Metaboli's tech. Thanks again.

but there are some users such as myself who have been gone for a while and recently re-joined who had no clue what happened so this clears it up for us, thanks .

Not a problem, I tried to be as clear as possible. Looking back now I see I might have missed some info though, but this is the basics.

I was under the impression that Metaboli (which was a competitor to Gametap) bought up enough stock in Gametap to takeover it's operations. I also had that impression because after Gametap seems to have been "bought" by Metaboli they introduced all the nice games from gametap to their server and removed the gametap client, which I actually liked as well, perhaps to cut programming costs.

At first I was excited, seeing that any Gametap game worth while was announced on Metaboli as a new game, I figured their good games would come to Gametap. But instead it seemed new games have been scarce instead. I'd imagine since alot of people took advantage of the last Christmas special, as I did, we will probably see some newer games around that time or at least on the "Coming Soon" list which tends to drop games frequently anyway.

Metaboli wasn't a competitor. Gametap was US-exclusive, Metaboli was Europe-exclusive.

buster42 wrote: Metaboli wasn't a competitor. Gametap was US-exclusive, Metaboli was Europe-exclusive.

Yes but we here in the US are always competing with Europe (take that France! MWHAHAHA), so doesn't that make them competetors .

(We now return you to your regularlly scheduled topic)

what i don't like about this is the classic pack and removed the multilayer for the arcade/console stuff

Hyena2 wrote: what i don't like about this is the classic pack and removed the multilayer for the arcade/console stuff

Yeah, but at the moment, emulated games that you play in browser can't really transmit simultaneous data to 2 computers within milliseconds. In other words, pure real-time multiplayer is not possible at this point in time. Games like Neo Turf Masters sure, since it's turn based, not real-time such as Street Fighter