July 6, 2012
It has been confirmed that some hardware/software configurations of Windows 7 will render The Free Mercenaries impossible to play. In order to avoid disappointment, users of Windows 7 should download the demo and test-play for at least an hour to check for possible video and mouse problems.
Users have reported flickering screens and freezing mice, as well as an annoying tendency for Windows 7 to not save game configuration files. (The game configuration file is saved in the same directory as the demo is run in, and will save the difficulty level and the sound volume levels.)
Windows XP users can breathe a sigh of relief, in that the game runs normally on most systems using that operating system. Some ATI video cards will render colored text incorrectly, but the game remains playable. Windows 2000 users will not encounter any problems, either.
The game is not guaranteed to play on Windows 98 systems, so users of that platform should download the demo to test for compatibility.
