MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries

Freeware release

On 9 July 2009, it was announced that MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries would be released for free by Studio MekTek. Shortly after, the company stated that Microsoft's legal department held up this release. After Microsoft gave the project a go on 22 April 2010, it was finally released on 30 April 2010. MekTek thanked its partners Smith & Tinker (the would-be developers of MechWarrior 5), Virtual World Entertainment and Catalyst Games (the current owners of many of FASA's tabletop games, including Battletech, on which the MechWarrior series is based) for "pressing Microsoft to allow for the release."

The free release includes all of the original content, as well as additional bug fixes, features, and Battlemechs. A link can be found in the Links/Searches section.

Multiple endings

There are three different endings. Which one the player receives depends on which branch of the campaign they take (i.e. join House Davion, House Steiner, or remain neutral).

Online servers

The game's online servers (which were hosted on MSN Gaming Zone) were shut down on 19 June 2006 in the wake of MSN Games' shift from "CD-ROM matchmaking service" to casual online games.