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Ryan Gordon's recent revelation that he would no longer be able to release new versions of the Mac client for America's Army came as a shock to many fans of the free first person shooter, particularly when they learned Gordon had been supporting the project without pay for a year after the Army's interest waned. In a new interview with Chris Chambers, deputy director of the America's Army project, The Mac Observer uncovers the Army's reasoning behind discontinuing support for non-Windows platforms.

Mr. Chambers confirmed that official support for the Mac and Linux clients "was made shortly after the [May 16, 2005] release of America's Army: Special Forces (Q-Course) v2.4.0." A thread on the game's message boards conveyed some internal confusion on the matter, with one person stating last month: "I didn't know it until recently and I work on the project."

Mr. Chambers said that the team leads were aware of the decision, but an official announcement wasn't made because "Ryan planned to continue support of these clients on his own, so we felt it wasn't necessary to officially announce dropping support, only to then turn around and release the new clients."

The rest of the interview can be found at the site listed below.

Mac Observer: America's Army Interview

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America's Army

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