The four strongest factions rise to seize power over the remnants of humanity. These are the Iron Coalition (UN forces), GigaCorp, the Belter Armada and the BIOS. The game begins in 2150, with BIOS aggression initiating widespread warfare between the factions. Initially developed by Microsoft Research, Allegiance was first released for multiplayer on the Microsoft Zone under the name Allegiance Zone. This was a paid subscription service but free play was available on the Free Zone (which had fewer features). The game never achieved commercial success however, selling a mere 29000 units in the first year of release. The official servers closed in 2002. During its brief retail life Allegiance had drawn a dedicated following that continued to play beyond Microsoft's discontinuation of support for Allegiance. Players created their own utilities to enable them to connect to LAN-hosted game servers and continued to play. To allow the player community to maintain Allegiance themselves, on the commercial End-of-life the source-code was released under a shared source license in 2004. It is up-to now maintained and developed by volunteers of the fan-community under the name "FreeAllegiance". On July 27, 2017 Microsoft Research changed the license from MSR shared source license to MIT license, due to the community's initiative to bring Allegiance to Steam. "Allegiance" was well received, claiming GameSpot's award for "Best Game No One Played", but it did not sell as well as Microsoft had hoped. Even with good reviews and a loyal playerbase, the game's steep learning curve made it unattractive to the average gamer. After Microsoft dropped support for "Allegiance", the game has continued to be developed and the game has received additional praise and recognition, but the playerbase has not substantially increased. The game was nominated in the Massive Multiplayer/Persistent World category, for the Interactive Achievement Awards 2001.