MSN Games (also known as Zone.com - formerly known as The Village, Internet Gaming Zone, MSN Gaming Zone, and MSN Games by Zone.com) is a casual gaming web site, with single player, multiplayer, PC download, and social casino video games. Games are available in free online, trial, and full feature pay-to-play versions. MSN Games is a part of Xbox Game Studios, associated with the MSN portal, and is owned by Microsoft, headquartered in Redmond, Washington. History The first version of the site, which was then called "The Village", was founded by Kevin Binkley, Ted Griggs, and Hoon Im. In 1996, Steve Murch, an employee of Microsoft, convinced Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to acquire the small online game site, then owned by Electric Gravity. The site was rebranded to "Internet Gaming Zone" and launched in 1996. It started with a handful of card and board games like Hearts, Spades, Checkers, Backgammon, and Bridge. For the following 5 years, the Internet Gaming Zone would be renamed several times and would increase in popularity with the introduction of popular retail- and MMORPG-games, such as MechWarrior, Rainbow Six, UltraCorps, Age of Empires, Asheron's Call and Fighter Ace. The website also featured a community forum which was set-up in 2006. This lasted until the closure of MSN Groups in 2009. Microsoft announced in July 2019 that it would be shutting down the Internet series of games built into Windows operating systems. Windows XP and ME games were shut down on July 31, 2019, while the remaining games on Windows 7 were shut down on January 22, 2020 (a little over a week after Microsoft ceased support for Windows 7). CD-ROM matchmaking MSN Games announced in early 2006 the retiring of support for CD-ROM games, chat lobbies, the ZoneFriends client and the Member Plus program, scheduled for June 19, 2006: "...as of June 19, 2006, we will be retiring our CD-ROM matchmaking service, along with the original versions of several classic card and board games: Classic Backgammon, Bridge, Classic Checkers, Chess, Cribbage, Euchre, Go, Classic Hearts, Reversi, and Spades. We’ll be sad to see them go! These games are like old friends: they gave us our start, and helped us grow from an innovative little entertainment site to a truly stellar online gaming experience. But over the years, it’s become more and more difficult to maintain the aging hardware and software that supports them. We