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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!"
On the Fallout 3 forums it was specifically stated that the reason no user-generated DLC would be available on Xbox 360 was because of Microsoft's policies. Perhaps someone can dig up a citation?
Shh.
Xbox 360 is the easiest console to do indie development for. Just look at XNA.
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.)
I have to say, when Mechwarrior was owned by FASA it was an exciting universe, I had a lot of ideas. I played MW2 back in the day online. Was in a Merc group for online play and we did rather well. I mean think of it, there were clans, Federation groups, and merc groups. it had a money system and you could buy/sell things. They had planets setup that would produce so much a week, etc. it was a full economy that this gaming group did on their own. There was even travel time between planets, and you had to "own" your own ships.
I left it after a while, but I enjoyed it and thought that it was a fun experience. That is an MMO, IMO. Eve is okay in this area, but MechWarrior just had the stories and the background. When MW3 and MW4 came out I was hoping to see that they were still around. They kind of are, but not in the scale that I speak of above. People didnt like MW3 or MW4 in the dynamics it provided like MW2 did.
One day I hope for a MW Universe based off the MW2 online community, but it may never happen because WizKids made it the lamest piece of crap I have ever seen.
You're == You are.
You are clearly meant for each other.
You're is correct.
You're an idiot.
"You fucked up! You trusted us!"
- Otter
MekTek got the insurance a while back, but Microsoft still hasn't gotten back to MekTek for what ever reason. "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." Does that sound like MekTek didn't get the insurance? Everything was done on MekTek's end. We got everything we needed, we were waiting for Microsoft to sign off on the legal papers, and we've been waiting for a very long time.
This is the Shared Source release for MechCommander 2. This release contains all of the source code and source assets required to build MechCommander 2. This release can be used with the Microsoft XNA Build March 2006 Community Technology Preview (CTP).
They've given this away for free (with source code), so why not give away Mech Warrior 4 for free, too? It's not like the games are extremely new or anything
SSC
With the advent of the open beta of Mechwarrior Living Legends, the "official" games may well be eclipsed by a fan-made total conversion mod for Crysis/Crysis Warhead. MWLL features, among other cool things, combined arms: air, mechs, infantry, and tanks are all playable and useful on the battlefield.
You're is correct.
You are correct
Once they figure out how to make it free and overpriced at the same time they will release it.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Allow me to make some sense for you. In order to release the said software Microsoft requires all companies to have insurance coverage ($5000/year) incase everyone ends up in court so you can cover yourself with a couple of million in coverage - its a safety net for a bunch of lawyers. Anyone doing software distribution should have coverage especially if they are profiting - which MekTek isn't. MekTek has paid for the insurance under the agreement but assumed the release was forth coming much faster. That was months and months ago. This has been a growing case for most larger corps requiring smaller groups to have intense commercial liability insurance. A big strain.
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.
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.
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