How to find old friends after MSN, Xfire and the forums shut down

Before searching anywhere, list every identifier you can recall: the MSN or Skype handle, the AIM screen name, the ICQ number, the Xfire username, the forum username and the name of the forum itself, the IRC nick and network, the TeamSpeak, Ventrilo or Mumble server you joined, and of course the games you played together and roughly when.

Handles are the keys here. A distinctive username plus the game and the era is often all it takes for the right person to recognise — even years later.

Most of the chat apps a generation grew up on have been switched off. MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger) was retired in 2013, AOL Instant Messenger closed in 2017, and Microsoft finally shut down Skype itself in 2025. ICQ, Yahoo Messenger and Xfire — the gamers’ messenger — are gone too.

A dead service means there is no contact list to export and no way to message the old handle directly. What you can still do is take the handle somewhere it might live on: search the exact name on Steam, Discord, YouTube, Twitch and a general search engine, since people tend to reuse the same nickname for years.

Clan sites and phpBB/vBulletin forums get deleted when someone stops paying for hosting, but their contents are often archived. Search the forum name together with the username, and check the Wayback Machine for old member profiles and threads that still list the handles you remember.

Communities also tend to migrate rather than vanish — a forum or IRC channel that went quiet usually reassembled somewhere newer (often a Discord). Finding the community’s current home is frequently the fastest route back to one specific person.

A TeamSpeak, Ventrilo or Mumble server was just an IP address someone rented. When they stopped paying, the address stopped resolving and the whole hangout disappeared at once — but the clan or friend group behind it almost always still exists somewhere.

Reach one member and the rest tend to follow, because that crowd kept in touch with each other even after the server died. The clan tag, the game and the era are strong, recognisable clues to lead with.

You cannot search a service that no longer exists, so flip the problem around: instead of only looking, make yourself easy to find. The person you lost — or a mutual friend who knows them — may be searching that same old handle right now.

A public wanted post on XCORE.GG records the game, the nickname and the platform you used ("we played Counter-Strike together and talked on TeamSpeak / MSN as X"), on a page search engines index. The next time that old name is searched, your post can be the result — and a Cores bounty rewards whoever makes the connection.

Stick to platform handles and shared gaming memories — not real names, addresses or workplaces. It keeps the search fair to the person you are looking for and keeps your post focused on what actually triggers recognition: the nickname, the game, the server, and the moments you shared.