gamespy

A tool for locating game servers on the Internet. Supports popular games such as quake, unreal, half-life and sin.

Large network of gaming "fansites", now affiliated to such demons as ZDNet and harvesting fresh meat in gaming fans to act as overworked cheap labor. It's not as much the hard work they ask from their members that's outrageous, mostly the fact that they don't pay them.

GameSpy also has an extensive set of software SDK's which they license to game developers and publishers. These range from low end SDKs such as establishing network connections and http interface, up to more complex systems such as a peer to peer lobby system, and an auto-patch updating SDK. Any game which has in-game GameSpy support is probably using the CEngine SDK, which allows game clients to emulate most of the functionality of the GameSpy Arcade client. Other SDKs fill in the gaps such as buddy lists, pinging, chatting, etc.

The GameSpy SDKs are well written, frequently updated, and well supported. There are also evaluation versions of the more basic SDKs available for download from GameSpy.

These libraries used to be released for free, but with the recent "discovery" of the near impossibility of making money through free websites alone, they have begun to charge developers and publishers for use of these SDKs. They are quite well worth it, though, if they meet your needs.