Roberts admitted that his team required large sums of money, which only a huge company could provide, to continue developing Freelancer with its "wildly ambitious" features and unpredictable schedule; the project had overshot its original development projection of three years by 18 months. Roberts trusted that Microsoft would not compromise his vision for Freelancer, and was convinced the software giant would not attempt the takeover if it did not believe Freelancer could sell at least 500,000 copies when released. Roberts left the company on completion of the deal, but assumed a creative consultant role on Freelancer until its release. Microsoft instructed Digital Anvil to scale down the ambitions of the project and focus on finishing the game based on what was possible and the team's strengths. Features such as the automated flight control, conversations that had different choices of responses, and sub-quests were abandoned. Despite the reductions, several reviewers believed the resultant product was still true to Roberts' vision. The Freelancer team kept a low profile throughout 2001 before displaying a demo of their latest work at International Games Festival 2002, drawing large crowds. Microsoft announced the project was on schedule, and Digital Anvil added all the planned content for the game by October 2002. A beta test with approximately 500 testers was conducted, and the only main activities left were to refine the game's features and to fix errors uncovered in the testing. The game shipped to retailers on March 4, 2003, and was later available online through Yahoo's Game on Demand service. Digital Anvil's role on Freelancer ended on June 6, 2003, with their delivery of a software patch to resolve issues on the server and cheating; the staff were redeployed to other departments in Microsoft. In accordance with their five-year support policy for software, Microsoft stopped supporting the game on April 8, 2008, and shut down their global server, which managed the list of multiplayer servers and the connection of players to them. Freelancers soundtrack was released by Sumthing Else Music Works on November 18, 2003. Composed by award-winning composer James Hannigan, music group Visual Music Incorporated, and Digital Anvil's musician and programmer Andrew Sega, it includes a bonus DVD that contains the game's alternative introduction movies, concept art, scripts, and deleted content. Communities of Freelancer players banded together to produce modified versions of the game. Their software modifications included new ships—including big capital ships—for players to