“Let me preface this by saying this is NOT a late April fools day joke.

After much discussion with various people on the staff, and
looking at potential timelines and where we currently are, Tsa and I
(being the primary legal agreement contacts with VU) have made the
difficult decision that it’s time to put a bullet in this project and
move on. This month (April) will mark 4 solid years of time and
substantial monetary investment that he and I and a bunch of other
people have into the project, and as we’re looking at at least
another years worth of development with questionable outcome, we’ve
decided the game has reached the point of diminishing returns and it’s
time to say good night gracie.”

For those unaware this project even existed, Starsiege: 2845 was going to be the direct sequel to Starsiege, the third game in an underdog mech sim series called Earthsiege. Most gamers will likely recognize the spinoff series “Tribes.” While the Earthsiege games are not as popular as Battletech/MechWarrior, it still has a handful of devoted followers, enough to start a grand project like 2845. The Alpha Tech Release [ATR] was released on October 18, 2006, and is available to download for free. There are a handful of maps and vehicles to pilot, including a fullly-functional flyer. The ATR was also notably of professional caliber, unlike numerous fanmade game projects found elsewhere on the Internet.

Anyone interested in playing the ATR will find the download here. It’s still just an Alpha so there will be a few bugs, but personally I didn’t have many crashes when I ran the game.