Xfire

This article is about the instant messaging service. For other uses, see Xfire (disambiguation).

Xfire

Main server list window on version 1.90 with the new default skin
Developer(s)	Xfire, Inc.
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Type	Instant messaging service
License	Freeware
Website	www.xfire.com

Xfire (pronounced "X-Fire") is a freeware instant messaging service targeted at gamers, that also serves as a game server browser and has various other features. It is currently available for Microsoft Windows. Xfire was originally developed by Ultimate Arena based in Menlo Park, California. Xfire currently has over 16.7 million registered users.

History

Xfire, Inc. was founded in 2002 by Dennis "Thresh" Fong (former Chief Gaming Officer; former U.S. Champion of Quake), Mike Cassidy (serial entrepreneur) (former CEO), Max Woon (former CTO) and David Lawee (former COO). The company was formerly known as Ultimate Arena but changed its name to Xfire when its desktop client Xfire became more popular and successful than its gaming website.

Xfire, the desktop client code-named Scoville, was first developed in 2003 by Garrett Blythe, Chris Kirmse (current General Manager), Mike Judge, and others. The full credits can be found in About under the Help menu in the desktop client.

On April 25, 2006, Xfire was acquired by Viacom in a US$102 million deal.

In September 2006, Sony was misinterpreted to have announced that Xfire would be used for the PlayStation 3. What they actually meant was that only one PS3 game, Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom, was to use some of the features with more game support planned for the future.

On May 7, 2007, Xfire announced they have over 7 million registered users.

On June 13, 2007, Mike Cassidy (former CEO, co-founder) departed the company to work for venture capital firm Benchmark Capital. Adam Boyden (VP of Business Development & Marketing) was assigned to take his place and manage the company for a temporary period.

On August 2, 2010, Xfire was acquired by Titan Gaming. At 22:16 GMT, the following message was broadcast to Xfire users "Xfire was bought by new owners today. Most of the team that has built Xfire over the last six years is leaving. We enjoyed working for you for the last 127 releases and wish we could stay to create the next 127. Good bye, good luck, and game on. --- The Xfire Team". A few minutes later the Xfire website displayed a message stating it was temporarily taken offline. When it came back a few minutes later, the news column on the left had the following content: "August 2, 2010—Xfire has been purchased by another company. Most of the team that has brought you Xfire for the last 6 years is leaving, including me. We've enjoyed our time and I personally am sad that I was only able to do 127 releases. Good bye and game on! - Chris". It was soon replaced with this message: "August 2, 2010--Titan Gaming Acquires Xfire Titan will be taking on the Xfire name, with a focus towards ongoing innovation in the gaming space. The Xfire services will continue uninterrupted for its users. Xfire redefined how gamers communicate, Titan intends to build upon this tradition and utilize the Xfire platform to help gaming companies better engage their users. We look forward to continuing and expanding upon the Xfire service. --- Raincrow"

Lawsuits

Yahoo! filed a lawsuit against Xfire, Inc. on January 28, 2005, claiming Xfire has infringed Yahoo!'s U.S. Patent No. 6,699,125, for a "Game server for use in connection with a messenger server". Xfire, Inc. filed a countersuit against Yahoo! on March 10, 2005. The countersuit was eventually disqualified by the judge. There has been a settlement between the companies as of January 31, 2006. More details were posted to Xfire's forums, though terms were not disclosed.

Features

Xfire has many features. Most of them can only be used in game. Some features include (please note that this is not a complete list of every feature. These are just a few):

Game detection

Xfire features the ability to detect the video game a particular contact is running. By analyzing running processes, Xfire can detect active games and send that information to Xfire clients with the current player as a friend. For many games, it can also detect which server people are playing on, the level which is running and ping times. Some games may be joined instantly. Xfire logs what games users are playing, how many hours they have played them, and saves other information (such as scores) from game servers. This information can be converted into a PNG image by the server via PHP for every user to use as a signature.

Instant messages

Xfire is most notable for its ability to send and receive instant messages from inside a game in fullscreen mode, eliminating the need to minimize the game window. Users can also send in-game messages to other players without joining the game and are also able to see what games their friends are playing. When a user is not playing a game and wish to join a friend who is, Xfire can launch the game and join the friend's server automatically.

Multi-Protocol Support

As of release 1.108 on May 4, 2009, there is a built-in alpha AOL Instant Messenger and Windows Live Messenger plugin. Currently, it only supports chatting, and none of AIM's other features. As of December 1, 2009, users could now access their Twitter accounts through Xfire. They could view updates posted by other users, as well as post their own. Recently Google Talk was added.

Voice chat

With version 1.43, released August 2005, Xfire, Inc. added a beta voice chat feature using Voice over IP technology. Until early 2009, if Voice Chat was being used in a chat room, users had to host the voice chat, making quality a problem. Some users have better system capabilities than others; therefore, voice quality and lag would be a problem. Xfire now hosts the voice chat sessions in high-quality—they call this addition "Xfire Pro-Voice."

Screenshots and videos

Xfire has the ability to take screenshots in game and save them to a specified folder, though this only works with Xfire In-Game-supported games, unlike Fraps. A user can take as many in-game screen shots as they want. Once the user exits their game, Xfire will load all of their screenshots in a window, where the user can then select all of the screen shots that they want to upload to their Xfire profile page. Users can also give each screenshot a caption. However, there are some games that are not compatible with Xfire In-Game.

Xfire has the ability to record video in-game. However, it can have a significant impact on game performance and recording quality; if one has a low-performance system and starts recording, the frame rate will slow dramatically. This is typically true of all video recording during gaming, and not unique to Xfire.

SDK

The Xfire Game Software development kit (SDK) was released with version 1.56 (May 2006). It offers game developers an interface to expose some of the game data to the Xfire application. This is not compatible with some games, just like the Screenshot feature.

Clan and guild system

In version 1.63, Xfire released a beta clan system. This allowed users to create clans or guilds on the Xfire website and invite members (recruits can also ask to join). Many other features were also associated with this such as setting up ranks, favorite games and the number of hours everyone has been playing. With version 1.85, the Clans & Guilds system was officially released.

Live Video (Broadcasting)

Xfire added a video streaming feature in version 1.97. A broadcast was required to be viewed using a web browser plugin, supporting only Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. In version 1.113, released on August 17, 2009, the broadcast system changed partner and allowed a plugin-less flash-based view compatible with any flash-enabled browser, including Apple Safari on Mac OS X. It lets anyone watch a live feed of a user's screen while they are playing a game. When a user begins a stream, it opens up a chatroom which anyone who is watching a live feed can join.

In-Game Web Browsing

In-game internet browsing capabilities were added to Xfire in version 1.103. Its homepage is set as a statistics page of the game being played: Clans and Guilds based around the game, current users playing, peak position (when it was the most popular game on the Xfire board) etc.

Support

As of 21 December, Xfire provided feature support for more than 1,520 games, of many different genres.

Support for Windows 98 and Windows Me was discontinued as of January 2007.

Xfire events

Xfire hosts events every month ranging from chat sessions with the program's developers or game developers, debates, game tournaments and machinima contests.

Third-party modifications

There are many third party modifications for Xfire's client and services, including skins, infoview templates, plugins, and protocol implementations. Some of these may or may not violate Xfire's Terms of Service, according to paragraph 6.

Skins and Infoviews

Skins can be used to provide a new look to the Xfire Client and chat windows, and Infoview skins can be used to provide extra functionality in the infoview pane. Skins are created through XML and image files, and Infoviews are created using HTML, Javascript, and images.

Xfire plugins

Xfire's lack of an API or SDK for developing 3rd party plugins makes the availability and development of plugins difficult.

Xfire Plus (home page)

A compilation of extension programs and files that allow you to enhance your Xfire client. This Plugin was discontinued when the XFire client received official support for all of its features.

Programs such as the Music plugin allow you to display the music you are currently playing, whereas the Xfire Web Messenger allows you to chat with your Xfire friends anywhere in the world, from any Java supporting operating system.

Xfire Music Plugin (plugin page)

A public domain standalone plugin for Windows Media Player on 32-bit operating systems that sets the user's status to a customizable string based on the media they are currently playing. The source is provided with the plugin and wi-fi

Open source protocol libraries

These libraries offer developers a way to write software to access the Xfire network, without having to write supporting code to handle the protocol, from scratch.

OpenFire

An open source (LGPL licensed) Java API and suite of tools for accessing the XFire instant messaging network.

xfirelib

An open source library written in C++ which implements the Xfire Protocol. Based upon it is a XMPP gateway to Xfire (XFireGateway) which also implements GOIM extensions to the XMPP protocol.

Multi-protocol messenger plugins

The following plugins allow users to chat on Xfire with other instant messaging clients.

Gfire (home page)

A Pidgin plugin which lets users chat and see what games their friends are playing. It supports Linux and Windows. It has most of the major Xfire features (Group Chat, Clan Chat, File Transfer, Avatars, Server and Game Detection).

Kopete plugin (plugin page)

Allows users to chat and see the status of their friends.

Miranda IM plugin (plugin page)

Chat with people on XFire, game detection and much more.

Trillian plugin (plugin page)

Allows users to chat and see the status of their friends; also detects games when the user runs them. (Currently, the plugin is not functional, due to protocol changes.)

Xblaze (home page)

An open source plugin for Adium that allows communication over the Xfire protocol, using the MacFire implementation (see below). It is the first Xfire client for Mac OS X. Now supports clans/communities.

Mac OS X Client

MacFire (home page)

An open source implementation of the Xfire network protocol for Mac OS X. It was made possible, in part, by the work previously done for XBlaze, XfireLib, and OpenFire.

iFire (home page)

BlackFire (home page)

A client targeted for Snow Leopard but works on Leopard.

iPhone / iPod Touch Client

Xblaze (home page)

An iPhone client for the iPhone and iPod Touch based on the MacFire implementation. Allows communication over Xfire. Supports clans/communities.

XFMobile (home page)

is the Xfire Mobile App. XFMobile is compatible with iPhone/Pod, the Android (operating system), Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices. Soon available: XFMobile for Symbian.

XFMobile

XFMobile is an independent client of Xfire. XFMobile is a unique application of Xfire on every platform. The first prototype of the application has been launched during the summer 2009.

The iPhone/Pod edition of XFMobile is the most advanced. It is free and naturally supports communication over Xfire, communities and clans, screen shots viewing etc.

XFMobile is a growing community of about 30,000 daily active users. 4/5 starts on the iTunes store and the XFMobile team works on improving XFMobile on a high scale.

Xfire users need the same user name and password than their Xfire account. For live support, the XFMobile team is reachable live using "xfmobile" on the Xfire contact list.

External links

• Xfire Official Site
• XFMobile Official Site -Xfire on Mobile
• Xfire wiki Official Wiki
• Czech unofficial support site