The Loot:

Here, I'll compare for people who just don't get it....

 Say it's the year 2000 again, and development on Halo is in full swing. All of a sudden, a group of people start taking all the Halo concepts and turning them into a mod for Half-Life. They offer it for free, thus in theory take at least some revenue and sales away from the real Halo. MS shuts them down, end of story.

 Fast forward to 2006... same thing. It doesn't matter how much, if any, revenue HaloGen would have taken from Halo Wars, MS has a LEGAL right to defend their IP.

 I'm tired of people bashing on MS for what they think are strong arm, monopolistic (is that a word) tactics. So someone's whining about a FREE web browser or media player... WHAAAAAAA!!!!! Make a better product, or shut up. Frankly I'd like to kick the EU's rear end for imposing unfair penalties on MS.

Anyways, I was looking forward to HaloGen myself, just cause it was taking Halo in another direction. I'm sorry to see it go, but I'm ecstatic that a full fledged, official Halo RTS is coming out. Sure, the HaloGen team put plenty of work into it, though I'm sure they just spent free-time on the project, not pouring blood, sweat, and tears into it as some people think. They knew that this could happen, prayed it didn't, and accepted it (if maybe a tiny bit grudgingly) when it did. Maybe they can take solace that the interest in their project spurred the development of Halo Wars, and put it past their egos (which I doubt would be the case anyways) and just enjoy the expansion of the Halo universe. 

Well said.

 And besides, the Halogen team can at least use what they produced as experience and use it in their portfolio. People should be glad that MS let it go on for so long anyway. They do have legal right to do what they did. Tis not like they quash any attempt to even make a halo inspired map for another game is it?