PlayLinc Offers Free Game Servers

Verizon wants to showcase its high-speed network to gamers through PlayLinc, and is inviting them to set up free game servers to do it.

If you can’t get enough high-speed Internet-based gaming in your life, Verizon Communications wants you to know about PlayLinc—and just so you’ll look twice, its enabling users to set up free servers for use with some of the most popular online action games, and it’s making the PlayLinc beta available for free.

PlayLinc is being developed by Super Computer International—it runs over Verizon’s high-speed fiber network, and the telecommunications company has a stack in the service—and purports to be a high-speed online gaming, browsing, and messaging network that brings together fans of multiplayer online games with high-quality services and tools. PlayLinc not only enables users to meet via VoIP or AIM chatting, browse game servers, manage teams, and set up games, but also enables them to start and configure their own game servers for popular games—all for free. Current game titles supported by PlayLinc increase Counter Strike,Half Life 2 Deathmatch,America’s Army,Quake 4, and UT2004. Servers can be private (for your own guests only) or public (if you’re OK with strangers wading through your battles).

PlayLinc marks the sort of service diversification major telco providers are trying to create, with an eye toward creating new sources of revenue from their bright, shiny, and very expensive high-speed data networks. Verizon plainly hopes that gamers will be impressed with the tehcnology and offerings, appreciate the high-speed, low-latency playing capabilities, and be willing to pay for similar or better service in the future—in fact, preferential network services devoted to gaming are one of the applications cited in the currently-raging debate over Net Neutrality.

PlayLinc requires Windows XP Home or Professional (which should be a surprise, because that’s what the supported games require, too).