Studio MekTek, in association with Smith and Tinker, Inc.; Virtual World Entertainment, LLC; Catalyst Game Labs; and Microsoft Games, have just announced the release of MechWarrior 4 Free. The release puts an end to speculation that the long-awaited project would die in committee under pressure from Microsoft’s legal department.

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In the past 24 hours, I learned that many of you are passionate as can be about MechWarrior 4. More specifically, MechWarrior 4 when it's available for free.

You see, my inbox is full with tips about how Microsoft's legal department gave MekTek Studios the go-ahead to release the game as a no-strings-attached free download. This was supposed to happen months ago, so yeah, kind of a big deal.

Thing is, the popularity of this stunt caused MekTek's servers to, well, go out in a blaze of glory. I had planned to hold off on doing a post until everything came back online; that obviously wasn't working out for me. Long story short, this is the site you'll want to bookmark. http://www.mektek.net/projects/mw4/