To celebrate the game's 10th anniversary, EA has decided to make Battlefield 1942 available for no charge.

However, there are a few gotchas:

• The only way to get the free version of the game from EA is to use their awful Origin service.
• The game is not compatible with the regular version. This means that you can't join servers running the regular version, including TPU. You can run a server with the new version, but only people running the new version can play on that server. Update: servers running the new free version appear in the in-game server browser, and the only way to distinguish them from regular servers is to look at the server info, scrolling all the way to the bottom, until you see the server version. The free version shows as 1.612, while regular servers appear as version 1.61. If you try to join one of the new free servers using a regular client, you get an error message telling you that there's a version mismatch.
• The original expansion packs (Road to Rome and Secret Weapons) have not yet been made available for free.
• The new version may not be compatible with BF1942 mods. Update: some work, but many don't.
• The new version of the server is vulnerable to being remotely crashed by commands, such as game.setTeam and game.createLocalPlayer. Update: Tuia (the person who patched the exploits in the original server) has patched the Origin version of the server.

I don't know whether to thank EA or tell them to go screw themselves.