PowerPlay was a technological initiative headed by Valve Software and Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...

 to decrease the latency for online computer games. Gabe Newell

Gabe Newell

Gabe Logan Newell is the co-founder and managing director of video game development and online distribution company Valve Corporation.-Work:...

, the managing director of Valve Software, announced the project in January 2000 and after 12 months the project was quietly abandoned.

PowerPlay was described as a set of protocols and deployment standards at the router level to improve performance. It was claimed that a player with 1000ms ping

Ping

Ping is a computer network administration utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol network and to measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer...

 was able to play against another player on a LAN

Län

Län and lääni refer to the administrative divisions used in Sweden and previously in Finland. The provinces of Finland were abolished on January 1, 2010....

 connection with no noticeable disadvantage. Initially the protocol was to be released with PowerPlay 1.0 focusing on Quality of Service

Quality of service

The quality of service refers to several related aspects of telephony and computer networks that allow the transport of traffic with special requirements...

 (QoS) and later a revision, PowerPlay 2.0 that would focus on functionality. Cisco and Valve intended to deliver a single dial-up service in Q1 2000 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 with a 30-day free trial with a bundled copy of Team Fortress

Team Fortress

Team Fortress is a team- and class-based online multiplayer video game mod based on id Software's Quake. Team Fortress was designed and written by Robin Walker, John Cook and Ian Caughley in 1996. The mod's gameplay has caught on with a large following of fans, which has spurred many developers to...

modified to support PowerPlay. Despite never deploying the dial-up plan featuring PowerPlay 1.0, Valve announced in January 2001 that the standard had indeed been finalized http://www.planetfortress.com/schtick/powerplay.shtml.

The standard was to involve purchasing PowerPlay approved Cisco hardware and infrastructure that had adequate bandwidth and QoS standards that prioritise PowerPlay gaming packets at the expense of all others. Gabe Newell

Gabe Newell

Gabe Logan Newell is the co-founder and managing director of video game development and online distribution company Valve Corporation.-Work:...

 conceded that Internet service provider

Internet service provider

An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

s (ISPs) would bear the brunt of this expense:

Company endorsement

At the time PowerPlay was proposed, many video game developer

Video game developer

A video game developer is a software developer that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game console, such as Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, or may develop for a variety of systems, including personal computers.Most developers also...

s were eager to support the technology. The official list from the PowerPlay website includes:

• Acclaim Entertainment
  Acclaim Entertainment
  Acclaim Entertainment was an American video game developer and publisher. It developed, published, marketed and distributed interactive entertainment software for a variety of hardware platforms, including Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, and Game Gear, Nintendo's NES, SNES, Nintendo...
  
  
• Applied Microsystems
• Bioware
  BioWare
  BioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts...
  
  
• Captivation
• Click Entertainment
• Dynamix
  Dynamix
  Dynamix, Inc. was an American developer of computer games from 1984 to 2001, best known for their flight simulator, Red Baron, the Front Page Sports series, Betrayal at Krondor, and their online multiplayer game, Tribes.-History:...
  
  
• Ensemble Studios
  Ensemble Studios
  Ensemble Studios was a video game developer initially established in 1995 as an independent company, but was owned by Microsoft from 2001 to 2009, when it was officially disbanded. Ensemble developed many real-time strategy games, including the Age of Empires game series, Age of Mythology, and Halo...
  
  
• Epic Megagames
• Gas Powered Games
  Gas Powered Games
  Gas Powered Games is a video game developer located in Redmond, Washington. The development studio was started in May 1998 by Chris Taylor, creator of Total Annihilation, and several other ex-Cavedog Entertainment employees....
  
  
• Gearbox
  Gearbox Software
  Gearbox Software, LLC is an American video game development company based in Plano, Texas.-History:Gearbox Software was founded in January 1999 by five members of the content team from the defunct developer Rebel Boat Rocker: Randy Pitchford, Brian Martel, Stephen Bahl, Landon Montgomery, and Rob...
  
  
• Jellyvision
  Jellyvision
  Jellyvision is a multimedia production company, founded by Harry Gottlieb, and is best known for making the You Don't Know Jack games. Originally named "Learn Television," it produced a number of edutainment titles, such as "That's A Fact, Jack!", before branching out into pure entertainment...
  
  
• Looking Glass Studios
  Looking Glass Studios
  Looking Glass Studios was a computer game development company during the 1990s.The company originally formed as Looking Glass Technologies, when Blue Sky Productions and Lerner Research merged....
  
  
• Nihilistic Software
  Nihilistic Software
  -History:Nihilistic was founded in March 1998 by Ray Gresko, Robert Huebner, and Steve Tietze. Gresko and Huebner had formerly worked at LucasArts, and Tietze had worked at Rogue Entertainment...
  
  
• Outrage Entertainment
  Outrage Entertainment
  Outrage Entertainment was a video game developer created in December 1997, when Parallax Software decided to split in two . Their headquarters were located in Ann Arbor, Michigan and had a staff mostly composed people who worked for Parallax Software, and were led by Matt Toschlog...
  
  
• Proksim
• Raven Software
  Raven Software
  Raven Software is an American video game developer. The company was founded in 1990 by brothers Brian and Steve Raffel. In 1997, Raven made an exclusive publishing deal with Activision and was subsequently acquired by them...
  
  
• Red Storm Entertainment
  Red Storm Entertainment
  Ubisoft Red Storm is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ubisoft Entertainment, specializing in video games and related merchandise, mainly based on the works of the writer Tom Clancy. The company develops and markets their own CD/DVD-ROM games...
  
  
• Relic
  Relic Entertainment
  Relic Entertainment is a Canadian game development company that specializes in 3D real-time strategy games and has released a number of unique PC games. Relic specializes in creative, visually appealing, and combat intense RTS games.-History:...
  
  
• Ritual
  Ritual Entertainment
  Ritual Entertainment was a computer game software developer established in 1996 by Robert Atkins, Mark Dochtermann, Jim Dosé, Richard 'Levelord' Gray, Michael Hadwin, Harry Miller and Tom Mustaine...
  
  
• Shiny
  Shiny Entertainment
  Shiny Entertainment was an American video game developer based in Laguna Beach, Southern California, and the creator of several popular titles such as Earthworm Jim, MDK, Sacrifice and The Matrix: Path of Neo. Shiny was founded by David Perry in October 1993...
  
  
• Valve Corporation
• Volition, Inc.

Lead programmer of id Software

Id Software

Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...

 John Carmack (a major competitor of Valve Software) was hesitant in endorsing the technology made public via a post made to Slashdot

Slashdot

Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...

shortly after PowerPlay was announced:

External links

• Shutdown PowerPlay website courtesy of Archive.org