Infantry Online

Infantry launched in 1999 from Harmless Games LLC, a studio formed by veterans of the pioneering massively-multiplayer game SubSpace. It was a combat MMOG rendered in top-down sprite graphics — soldiers, ground vehicles, and spacecraft battling across large, complex terrains — the kind of big, chaotic team warfare that was still a novelty online at the time. By October 2000, Sony Online Entertainment had moved to acquire the game.

Under SOE, Infantry lived on Station.com alongside the company's other online titles. In May 2002 SOE rolled out a $6.95-a-month subscription for its three small action games — Infantry, Cosmic Rift, and Tanarus — though Infantry and Cosmic Rift stayed playable for free with some limitations. Then in June 2007 SOE opened full free access to Infantry and the rest of its "Station Pass" lineup, which kept a dedicated community coming back for years past the game's commercial peak.

Sony finally shut down the Infantry servers at the end of March 2012. That wasn't the end, though: the community took control of the game and relaunched it independently as FreeInfantry (freeinfantry.com, later even landing on Steam), keeping the sprawling sprite-based battles alive. For the players who logged into those crowded, frantic fights, Infantry was one of the quiet cult corners of early-2000s online gaming.