This week, Mac gaming programmer Ryan Gordon confirmed in his blog that the Army has dropped the Mac and Linux versions of its first-person shooter Americais Army, which was created in 2003 to help military recruitment. While the Army officially ended development of everything but the Windows version at least a year ago, Mr. Gordon acknowledged that he had been allowed to keep working on the Mac and Linux versions on his own time.

He said, however, that the Army currently only pays him to maintain the Linux server for the game, with the Mac and Linux versions cancelled "several versions ago. Letis say it happened when GameSpy jacked their prices, but the port wasnit actually cancelled because of the GameSpy fiasco; while it definitely didnit help, the two events just happened to coincide."

GameSpyis licensing costs increase forced Mr. Gordon to pull that code out of the Mac version and create a workaround. "Sometimes the project is more important than the paycheck," he said of his pro bono programming work. At this point, however, he doesnit have the time to keep his Americais Army work going, given the number of paying jobs he has.

"The Army, I think, probably sees these freebie ports as a nuisance, since theyire almost always late, and all they see are complaints from the Mac and Linux users about delays in a project they thought they axed several releases ago," Mr. Gordon wrote. At this point, version 2.6 of Americais Army "might still make it out the door; 2.7 probably wonit."

However, he made it clear that Appleis release of Boot Camp had nothing to do with his decision, as some people on an Americais Army forum thread thought. The Mac Observer is currently waiting to hear back from Americais Army representatives regarding the decision to axe the Mac and Linux versions of the game, but responses to questions likely wonit happen until next week. At that time, we will post their responses.