Battlefield 3 is finally liberated... from the tyranny of the official servers. After five years in development, Venice Unleashed (VU) has finally been released. The mod reverse engineered the server code of Battlefield 3, creating a platform for all kinds of mods as well as personal host servers.

With VU, you can set up a dedicated server containing mod tools. This is a welcome development, as the official Battlefield 3 servers have been plagued by cheaters for years. Also, prior to this, you could only have a server through an EA-authorized partner; VU also allows you to host and play on dedicated servers for mods like the community-created Reality Mod.

Under European Union interoperability laws, VU is perfectly legal, say the VU creators; an authorized copy of Battlefield 3 and an Origin account are required to use the mod, which does not modify or distribute EA-owned assets.

In addition to adding private server settings and tick rate options, VU also offers a fully-featured spectator system for filming in-game and organizing competitions. In the future, VU developers are working on content authoring for complete custom content, remote hosting of server mods, and in-game positional voice chat among other communication tools.

Venice Unleashed can be found on the official website veniceunleashed.net. Mine should be somewhere in a shoebox full of gaming DVDs.