Xfire discontinues game chat client

Xfire has unexpectedly stopped its game chat client and the service’s social site is also shutting down. The company behind the client says it wants to focus on the Xfire Tournament Platform. The client was first released in 2003.

The Xfire Client has been stopped immediately. The service allows users to retain screenshots and videos of profiles via a form. The company behind Xfire says the game industry has changed a lot and that esports now has the opportunity to grow into something huge. “We want to be part of that,” said the company behind the service.

“We believe we are in a position to make an impact in taking esports from the pros to the masses and we can’t do that effectively if we also have to keep up with the client and the social website,” the team writes. Xfire was released in 2003 as a chat client for gamers and over time functionality was added such as taking screenshots and recording video for sharing via a social site. The client also kept extensive statistics of the performance in the various game.

At the end of 2014, the service still had 24 million registered users, but services such as Xfire and Raptr seemed to be losing popularity, as major platforms such as Steam and those of the Xbox and PlayStation consoles offer the same.