Yesterday was a sad day for PC gamers the world over, as many games became unplayable online following the shutdown of Gamespy, one of the gaming world's longest running matchmaking services. However many developers have stepped in to save their favoured or most popular games, one of those companies being the defunct but apparently still operating, GSC, which has made it possible to continue playing all of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games for some time to come.
Replacing the original Gamespy servers with its own ones, GSC has now saved Shadow of Cheynobyl, Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat with the move.
If you have any of those games installed via Steam, then they should update automatically to replace the Gamespy server list with the GSC one, but if you have it installed as a standalone game, you'll need to download the official patche(s) here.
The only downside to the news, is that some information such as in-game statistics couldn't be saved, so a lot of characters will have a fresh start when they take their next step into the radiation filled wastelands of CSV's S.T.A.L.K.E.R universe.
Other developers like Bohemia and Gearbox have stepped in to save some of their most popular games, like the original Bordeerlands and A.R.M.A games, but many others have been left at the wayside. Hopefully as they become true classics, they'll be folded into services like Game Ranger to make them playable again.