The cult free-to-play mech shooter Hawken ended its PC version in early 2018 and was removed from Steam, leaving fans to mourn. Despite its troubled development history, Hawken was unique in the field of both free-to-play and Mech games. Various statements and rumors about the game's resurrection have so far proven false, with the official website completely dormant and social media accounts either dormant or deleted.

Fans, however, will not be deleted; a group calling itself Hawakening has been struggling to get the game up and running again, and has finally succeeded: thanks to a method devised by the Hawakening team, it is back, at least in a limited form. While it can be activated, it can only be played offline in single-player versus game AI, as there is neither a multiplayer server nor the code to enable it.

Still, if you miss Hawken, that may be enough. The modding community has said they would like to talk to either publisher 505 Games or developer Hawken Entertainment Inc about bringing the game's PC multiplayer back.

Just to be clear, backing up the software and using this method to play the game in single player is only legal if you own the license for the game (United States only; if you play the game on Steam, you have the license. Here's how to play:

To learn more about the project, watch the video above and then visit Hawakening.com.