An immediate, high priority error that occured for first-time users trying to install the previous release has forced us to make another update to the Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas Deathmatch game client.

To sum it up, if you were experiencing any serial number (or user account) problems or received any "Mod not found" in-game messages, we strongly recommend you to download this new release which contains fixes for these problems.

Serial support has been temporarily dropped due to reasons stated below, and may be replaced by a new system in the next major release (v1.0-dp3). In the mean time, this release should make sure that anyone who wishes to play can play. Do not be alarmed by the "dp2.1" version notation in-game: the actual game logic has not been changed, as only the necessary parts were patched to solve the above issues.

Head over to the download page to download this new release. Please note that the v1.0-dp2 servers are still compatible with dp2.3 and do not have to be upgraded. 

Due to the recent shutdown of a third-party service we have used for our user account and serial number management, and the majority of problems that have appeared with this system, we have decided to bring out a new game client that is meant to fix all related problems.

Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas Deathmatch v1.0-dp2.2 disables some strict enforcements regarding serial numbers that are currently no longer possible. This means that all our users (especially our first-time users) should be able to play again. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by these serial numbers in the previous releases.

We have chosen to release this minor version instead of our next major v1.0-dp3 version due to some major changes we have made in this new version that are not yet stable enough to be released.

Either way, we hope you'll enjoy your game of Multi Theft Auto without any problems you may have had in the past.

The new release can be downloaded by navigating to our deathmatch download section. Please note that all v1.0-dp2 servers are still fully compatible with this release.

We are currently in the process of upgrading our server hardware that is currently serving this website as well as various other Multi Theft Auto related websites.

Short downtime is expected to occur as we make the transition from a Texas, United States based server to our new hardware that is located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Our next release, DP3 is almost ready! As this is a fairly large release we have decided to run a few public tests. We want you to help by participating in a mass test to determine how the sync and stability of DP3 holds up, as these are obviously critical areas for players. This public testing will be done with the "light" version of the client, which does not include the server, server module SDK, or the map editor.

For our initial test, we will ONLY test general gameplay, using a gamemode called "fmjdm". This gamemode was chosen for 3 reasons:
1) It has the same city-wide style of the most popular servers
2) It is the only gamemode of this style that is currently DP3 compatiable, due to scripting changes
3) Gamemodes of this type brought out some of the worst bugs in DP2.

The timeframe of this testing is not set in stone. The start and length of the testing depends on how quickly people show up and how well the testing goes.

The testing will be run on IRC at #mta-pubtest. See our section about IRC for information on how to use IRC.

Additionally, we have a mailing list to let you know when we are about to begin releasing files for testing on IRC. To join this list, sign up here: beta.mtasa.com . However, it will be required that you join #mta-pubtest during testing if you wish to participate.

If you use twitter you can also receieve updates on new beta tests, releases and witty insightful comments from our QA team by following our twitter page .

Edit by jhxp: The first test has ended! It's astonishing how fast our test channel started filling just after a few minutes since the publishing of this news post. We appreciate your willing to help us with testing, as we've managed to reproduce some issues which could occur on the server with bigger number of players only. While there were some other issues which we've had to deal with while the test, the opinions on this build were generally positive.

Edit 2 by Ransom: The second test has ended. This test occurred yesterday around the same time of the first test. The second test was identical to the first test explained above. We also tried out a few other scripts and gamemodes afterward just for fun. The response to this test was even greater than the first. We had around 75 players in the server at one point and around 115 people in IRC. We saw some nice progress since the last test with fixed crashes and other issues. Only a few major issues during general play arose again. Overall it was very acceptable game play - a massive sync improvement over DP2. There will be more test(s) to come. It is likely that one of these mass tests will be a precursor to the actual release. Thanks again for testing.

Note: When we are not testing, the IRC channel #mta-pubtest is closed with a join password activated. We will reopen it when we are ready for the next test. Once we are, we will announce it through the information channels mentioned above.

A small update for Multi Theft Auto: Deathmatch DP2 has been released that incorporates a new server browser provided by game-monitor.com and some minor tweaks to the account system and the installer. This upgrade has no other changes from DP2 except for these fixes. We strongly recommend all Deathmatch players download this update to restore the server browser to working order.

Server administrators do not need to update. This is a client-side only update, DP2.1 clients can connect to DP2 servers and vice versa.

Download Multi Theft Auto: Deathmatch DP2.1 here!

As always, please report any issue that were not in DP2 to us via the forum, IRC or the comments below.

In other news, DP3 is now having stress testing done on it, initial reports from our QA team are that the all-important 'sync' is further improved. DP3 also fixes 157 (and counting) bugs that have been reported to us. We've had a number of new developers join the team over the last couple of months that has provided a boost in our productivity. We've also finally got our new internal build system up and running that gives us a much better way of distributing builds for our QA team to test. We should have DP3 out pretty soon, baring any significant bugs being found in wider testing.