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!"

Comments

Re:Fallout 3

[headkase]

Here 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.

Re:Antithesis of Free

[the linux geek]

Xbox 360 is the easiest console to do indie development for. Just look at XNA.

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.)

Re:Fallout 3

[Beelzebud]

Epic also wanted community made maps to be added to UT3, and MS told them no.

Valve Software wants to release their DLC on Xbox Live for free, like they do on the PC, and MS literally will not let them do it.

Re:Fallout 3

[davester666]

So only professionally drawn penises are acceptable to Microsoft for distribution?

MechWarrior series

[jhoegl]

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.

Re:MechWarrior series

[Stray7Xi]

MW2 was simply made in a different era. I mean, back then MS Flight Sim was one of, if not *the* biggest PC franchise of all

The different era is the standardization of computers. Back with the early mechwarriors not even mouses were a standard on all computers. The standard PC didn't have a sound card. You bought a sound card specifically for games (which is why sound cards have gameports for joysticks). Every PC game released in that era required setting up. So an extra $50 for a joystick and dozens of keybindings wasn't considered that much of a pain.

Nowadays PC games are standardized, they assume you have a keyboard+mouse (or are using an xbox gamepad). With DirectX it's mostly seamless for controls, sound, and video. Joysticks are a very niche product. What's common about mech/space/flight sims is they all basically require a joystick. Gamers with joysticks nowadays are so few that the market is small.

Re:Antithesis of Free

[Anonymous Coward]

You're == You are.

You are clearly meant for each other.

You're is correct.

You're an idiot.

Re:Financial angle

[zach_the_lizard]

MechCommander 2, shared source release

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

Mechwarrior Living Legends beat them to the punch

[StupidKatz]

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.