Electronic Arts, who on their company's "vision" says that they "value being a generous company and community member", have brought about the demise of fan-run servers for some older, no longer supported Battlefield games. The games in question - Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, and Battlefield Heroes - had their multiplayer components shut down with the demise of GameSpy, and were being maintained by a fan coalition named Revive Network.

"We will get right to the point: Electronic Arts Inc.' legal team has contacted us and nicely asked us to stop distributing and using their intellectual property," the Revive Network team wrote. "As diehard fans of the franchise, we will respect these stipulations." Revive Network were distributing modified versions of the older Battlefield titles along with a launcher that allowed access to its own, rewritten server infrastructure - and this seems to be the reaon why EA sought closure. "Please stop distributing copies of our game clients and using our trademarks, logos, and artwork on your sites," EA's counsel wrote. "Your websites may easily mislead visitors to believe that you are associated or affiliated with EA-we're the only ones that get to wear the 'Official EA' dog tag."

EVGA released another version of its SLI Enhancement Patch, version 8 (03.30.09), its third one for this month alone. The patch works in conjunction with the installed NVIDIA GeForce driver, in providing SLI support to games through SLI profiles. The support is game-specific, and each release of the patch expands the support-base. The new version is based on NVIDIA driver 182.46. The following games are added to the support list, apart from all the games already supported by the patch:

• Battlefield Heroes
• Stormrise
• Weapons of Fate
• Jumpgate Evolution
• Age of Booty
• Football Manager '05-'09

Registered EVGA users can download the patch from here.

Ben Cousins, the Senior Producer of Battlefield Heroes, shared some slides, ideas and info on DICE's free 4 play animated Battlefield title. The game will be based on the Battlefield 2142 engine with "the crazy unrealistic feel of Battlefield 1942 and Codename Eagle". More details:

• Graphics and machine specs are cut down
• Simplified Gameplay
• Matchmaking Service
• AutoPatching
• Easier Introduction into Gameplay
• More RPG Elements Introduced

At the Digital, Life, Design Conference (DLD) in Munich, Electronic Arts announced it will be releasing an all-new free Battlefield Heroes shooter. Battlefield Heroes is a brand new Play 4 Free game from the people that brought you the multi-million selling Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2. It will be a fun cartoon-style shooter which caters to players of all skill levels - easy to pick up and play, but with deep character development. Aimed at the mass market, the game will offer a downloadable client, lots of character customization and hours of shooting madness.

With the new online model we will continually add new content to keep the game fresh and keep players engaged, while integrating player feedback in real time. As a game developer, it is such a cool new way to make games.

said Ben Cousins, Senior Producer at DICE, an EA company, that is behind this new project. Battlefield Heroes will be released for the PC as a free download in Summer 2008. Head over to the Battlefield Heroes site to keep up to date with its progress.