Status
In 2000, Microsoft Gaming Zone started to become a target of continuous hack attacks. Hackers—and for the most part, script-kiddies—both targeted the Zone software. Hackers and script-kiddies mostly left Ants alone to concentrate on Member plus frequented chat rooms and game rooms. This continued sporadically for the next several years, until 2003 when the worst hack-attack occurred by the use of social engineering, giving the intruders access to the administrator tools. The intruders used their new-found tools to ban players and other site volunteers. This meant bad news for Ants, as it soon found itself a vulnerable target because it was free, outdated (no major code changes had occurred since early 2000), and the fact that several of the "script-kiddies" behind the attacks were regular Ants players. This led to Ants being used as an occasional testing ground for newer and more malicious assaults on Microsoft servers while the script-kiddies & hackers attempted to stay one step ahead of the Microsoft administrators and system operators.
Despite all of the troubles, representatives from Microsoft Gaming Zone, when publicly peppered in chats by Ants players, would refuse to give a direct answer on the future of Ants. Ambiguity ran rampant, with crisp one or two sentence responses becoming standard. Finally in early 2004 Joshua Howard announced that Ants would eventually be taken off Microsoft Gaming Zone servers, and not released to anyone else or the general public. News of this created distress within the Ants gaming community, and an independent attempt by an Ants regular to begin creation of an "Ants 2" code ended with Microsoft threatening legal action towards the player. Refusing to back off despite attempted negotiations, Microsoft continued its threats and eventually the project was scrapped and the code hidden away.
To prepare for this eventual demise, Microsoft moved Ants to a different section of its Zone; until January 2006, Ants still remained on Microsoft servers. It could be found once signed in to a .NET Passport .
Due to users being booted offline, lagged, hung up, frozen, or attacked many Ants players left to find other sites to spend their time on; or migrated to other games on Microsoft Zone with less frequent interruptions from Denial of Service attacks. Collectively, Ants suffered a drastic decline in population starting in early 2003 which continues to this day. Where game rooms used to be filled on a Friday or Saturday night, there now resides only a handful of players. Many users also had issues when using internet routers with Microsoft Ants. Since the game was not designed nor coded for the new wave of cable and DSL connections with people sharing their connection, the actual computer name instead of the signed-on MSN/Passport name would appear in the game's start screen. In most cases, players were unable to connect to each other while using a router, even after trying to open router ports and the like. This further lead to a decline in players.
On January 31, 2006, Microsoft's Zone retired Ants because of the lack of players.
Read more about this topic: Microsoft Ants
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