MechWarrior 4 Free Release Delayed By Microsoft

Vamman writes with a followup to news from 2009 that MekTek.net was going to release MechWarrior 4 for free after obtaining permission from Smith & Tinker, who licensed the MechWarrior rights from Microsoft. Now, almost a year later, the free release has yet to see the light of day, in large part due to Microsoft. Quoting: "... the Free Release is held up at Microsoft and it is unknown to us and our studio when the Free Release will be given the final go ahead. Due to the demands placed upon us by industry lawyers to release the Mechwarrior4 Free release we were forced to insure our studio at a premium rate to meet the Microsoft standard. Our insurance policy is a one year lease and we are unable to tap out of this policy until next fall. In addition to our insurance costs we are also struggling with our server costs. Currently, our server fund has run dry and staff and beta members are paying out of their pockets to help keep MekTek online. At this point we don't know from month to month if we will be able to stay online." Vamman adds, "MekTek has released a major update for their existing community, expansion MekPak 3.1. They are also promising their new expansion, MekPak 4, in a few weeks as open beta!"

Re:Fallout 3

[headkase]

Here [mtv.com] is an article that talks about why user generated content is restricted so much on an Xbox 360: Microsoft is afraid someone will draw a penis. So, no opportunity to community vett content before it goes to general consumption just ban it from everyone and leave the job to the professionals.

Damm, i hate being right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the thought of 'microsoft will NEVER put out anything free thats any good' back when they announced this.

I'm a big mechwarrior fan and i own all their games. And holy crap its a pain in the ass to install mech4 series with all the packs, keys, drm, patches, updates, and other hoops to jump thru.
A free all in one pack would make it so simple.

Mechwarrior is also what got me started on piracy. The retail version had that horrible copy protection running sucking up resources and causing crashes. Kill that during the game and it runs fine.
Till the next game looks for it. And you have to reload. But the pirated copy didnt have any of that problem.

So mechwarrior was the first game i owned that i pirated. because the pirate version ran BETTER!

Since that day its been pirate first. Buy if its worthy. (Looking back, there were not a lot of them worth buying. maybe 3-5 games a year max.)

To quote a great American philosopher

[otis wildflower]

"You fucked up! You trusted us!"
- Otter

Re:Battletech/Mechwarrior - so much promise

[PrescriptionWarning]

Not sure what game you played, but Mechwarrior 2 was the first battletech game where you had as full customization as you did in the board game, right down to placing each "critical" slot for each weapon and ammo installed. Of course mechwarrior 2 for playstation 1 didn't have this ability if I remember correctly, so the PC version may have had the advantage of full customization.

Re:Battletech/Mechwarrior - so much promise

[CAIMLAS]

Are you sure you played Mechwarrior 2? It was the most customizable of the lot, by far. It was also the Mech game with the best gameplay, single and multiplayer.