The very popular gaming messenger service known as Xfire has apparently been purchased, but by whom (at least for the time being) remains a mystery. To date, the buyer has not elected to publicize that they are the new owner.

Xfire gained incredible traction within the PC gaming community by providing a messaging service that was centered around free messaging using an ad-supported revenue model. The real magic, however, was in the way that the service was able to track what game you were playing and make that information part of your status, as well as to alert users within game when one of their friends’ list was attempting to contact them.

The Xfire service was actually founded by Dennis “Thresh” Fong, who was one of the first true professional gamers and has since gone on to create Raptr. According to we have heard about the sale, the actual news was broken by members of the development team who announced that Xfire had been sold. Sources claim that the majority of the development staff for Xfire is departing.

While no one seems to want to yet claim that they are the purchaser of Xfire, the service itself was successful in the fact that it has over 16 million registered users. With the abilities of what Xfire offered at the core, many PC gamers believe Xfire to be a very primitive Xbox Live service on many levels for the PC gamer. Of course, it could be argued that there are better and more robust solutions available now, but Xfire was the first. We will update you when we find out who the mystery buyer from Viacom is.