PC Community Gaming
 

Do any of you use community gaming software such as X-Fire, Gamespy Arcade and the like? If so, would you care to share your opinions on their positives & negatives?

I primariliy play first-person shooters such as Call of Duty and the like, and just jump on a favorite server to play. But lately I've become more interested in playing with friends and knowing when they are online so I can jump into a game with them (Xbox Live is great at this on the console side, and Steam is good for the pc, but Steam only supports games purchased through them, correct?).

None of us host our own servers or belong to clans. I am just wondering what your thoughts are regarding the best option out there that works with the most games and offers the most servers to jump onto and play at any given time.

Thanks.

I have used xfire before, and never had any problems with it. They seem to add new features pretty regularly, and software updates come even more frequently. I believe they just added video chat if I remember correctly, but don't quote me on that. For me, it was very customizable, and still easy to use. Unfortunately I have a couple of stubborn friends that will only use ventrilo, so i switched awhile ago.

As far as Gamespy, I only used it back when it was the only thing around, and it never seemed to useful back then, but I have no idea what kind of state it is in now.

Thanks for the response. I'll give XFire a try.