Some sad news: in-browser game site InstantAction is now dead. The site had been closed for quite a while, promising a relaunch of the service with brand new features (including a browser version of the much-beloved Tribes) but after months of waiting we find out not only are those new features not coming, but neither are the original games returning either.

The greatest loss here is easily Fallen Empires: Legions, an amazing 3D browser game that was superficially similar to Tribes, but with the jetpacks an order of magnitude more powerful and with a corresponding increase in the speed of gameplay. There’s nothing quite like the exhilarating feeling you get from flying over a hill at 100 miles per hour and carefully landing on your opponent’s base, and now it’s likely you won’t ever get the chance to experience it.

On the brighter side of things, there’s a fan group attempting to get Legions back into action, and although the demise of InstantAction means the browser version of Tribes will likely never become a reality, this freed up the Tribes license for the developers of Global Agenda to work on an MMOG FPS based on the property.

So while Fallen Empires: Legions and the browser-based Tribes game might be out of the equation, we’ve got a MMOG version of Tribes on the horizon as well as the Tribes-inspired Firefall coming. Instead of the return of two older games, we have two new games about supersoldiers with mecha backpacks to look forward to–a fair trade if you ask me.

Update: Looks like a new version of the game will be starting up at LegionsOverdrive.com.