[aerique]

I don't know this game, but if for example Blizzard would shut down the World of Warcraft servers you could still play it on private servers. Same for a lot of other MMOs that do not have their official server anymore like Star Wars Galaxies and Earth & Beyond. People can still play these on private and / or emulated servers.

[hatu]

Don't you need some kind of a cracked version of the game for that? I don't know if you can play on private servers with a Steam version of a game anyway.

[67726e]

It probably depends on the game and how they store server information. For instance, if they hostname for the server that broadcasts available game servers is sitting in a .ini file, you don't need a crack. If it was a hardcoded string in the binary, then you would. Of course some games may also employ other mechanisms to restrict what/where you can connect to, but in a lot of cases I've seen it is a matter of pointing to an IP with a server running.

As an example, Counter Strike: Source stored the servers in a human readable file and you could add alternative servers in the config file without a problem.

[maaku]

And where do you get the software that runs on the servers?

[aerique]

Most server software is emulated but I suspect there might be instances of leaked server software.

[randallsquared]

In 2007, at least, you could play WoW on a private server merely by changing your config file to point at that server; no crack was necessary. It probably was not worth Blizzard's time to shut down this configurability.

[baby]

private servers on WoW are illegal, and you might have to downgrade to be able to join one.

[teddyh]

Illegal? What law is being broken?

[kyrra]

Blizzard actively shuts down people that reverse engineer their servers[0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd

[mrjatx]

His point is that it's a EULA violation, not a criminal one.