Games has acknowledged it as offering the best dogfighting among the space combat classics. Ars Technica also posed FreeSpace 2 as the last significant stage in evolution of the space combat genre . Fans of the FreeSpace series have created modifications (mods) of FreeSpace 2. The first mods were just custom campaigns, with series of missions created through FRED2, the mission editor freely packaged with FreeSpace 2. One such mod which gained notability was Inferno, which sets its story decades after the conclusion of FreeSpace 2. Released in July 2003, the mod was hosted on established sites, such as GameSpot and CNET, as part of their FreeSpace 2 contents. Sales Despite glowing reviews, FreeSpace 2 was a commercial disappointment. In the United States, it totaled sales of 26,983 copies by the end of 1999, according to PC Data. Writing for Daily Radar, Andrew S. Bub remarked that the game "horrifically" underperformed and was one of the most unfairly overlooked titles of the year. FreeSpace 2 was a runner-up for GameSpot's 1999 "Best Game No One Played" award, which ultimately went to Disciples: Sacred Lands. FreeSpace 2s sales were acknowledged as disappointing, and described as awful by Kulas. He, however, stated that as the team had stayed within budget by sticking to schedule, Volition should at least be breaking even with the estimated final sales of the game. In NowGamer's interview with Jim Boone, a producer at Volition, he said that this could have been due to joysticks' being sold poorly because they were "going out of fashion" and more modern first-person shooters, such as Quake, were "very much about the mouse and [the] keyboard". He went further on to state: "Before that, when we did Descent for example, it was perfectly common for people to have joysticks – we sold a lot of copies of Descent. It was around that time [when] the more modern FPS with mouse and keyboard came out, as opposed to just keyboard like Wolfenstein [3D] or something". Source code project With the release of the game engine's source code, the possibilities of changing the game greatly opened up, and the fan community made use of the code to update the game using recent technology. Led by Edward Gardner and Ian Warfield, the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project was formed to standardize changes and maintain a core engine for others to take advantage of. Using the