April 16th, 2002

As many of you know, the Australian magazine PC PowerPlay has recently released what they thought was a demo of Master of Orion III. Obviously this has caused a big stir around the Quicksilver offices since we've never made a MOOIII demo. Apparently what they got their hands on was a pre-alpha version of MOOIII that was delivered as one of our normal milestone deliveries to Infogrames and was never meant for public consumption. I spoke to our producer at Infogrames this morning and what I've been told is that one of the Infogrames employees at the Australian office gave the CD out without authority and that led to its release. At this point Infogrames is dealing the problem but obviously there's only a certain amount that can be done after the fact.

So, for those that have seen the version, please realize that what you have is NOT an official demo. It's a pre-alpha build that is buggy, incomplete and needs a lot of tuning/adjustment of screens. Moreover, while we'll be leaving any screenshots up on the forums that have been posted we will be removing any links to actual copies of the version since we don't feel it's representative of the game. Thanks for everyone's support.

Cory Nelson
Producer
Quicksilver Software Inc.