Need for Speed: Most Wanted drawing 5,000 matches daily

Australian multiplayer necromancer GameRanger has rebutted EA's claim that Need for Speed: Most Wanted doesn't have significant player numbers.

The Perth-based service responded to EA's announcement that it would soon shut down 17 multiplayer servers.

"GameRanger added multiplayer support for Need for Speed: Most Wanted on April 7, in anticipation of these shutdowns. There are about 5,000 multiplayer games of NFS:MW played each day on GameRanger now," Scott Kevill said.

"There will be a thriving community waiting. This won't help the console players, but will at least help the PC players given that Need For Speed: Most Wanted is still quite popular (contrary to EA's generic claim)."

GameRanger now boasts multiplayer servers for over 600 games, many of which have been abandoned by their original providers, and a community of more than 1.8 million members. ou can join their ranks by downloading the free client.

The company's most recent high-profile addition was Codemasters' Grid.