Westwood Online was the official multiplayer service of games by Westwood Studios. It is unknown when the service was truly shut down, but the community-run server XWIS, which already existed at the time, became its de facto replacement in 2005, sponsored by the German branch of Electronic Arts. To access the server, supported games required the Shared Internet Components to be installed. Certain games were incompatible with versions of the Components earlier than the concurrent version at the time of their release.