Dark Reign 2

Dark Reign 2 features three modes: campaign, online multiplayer, and an instant action mode. Multiplayer functionality allows up to 32 players at once, featuring four 'rulesets: Gluttony, Protect HQ, Blood Bath, and Deathmatch. Blood Bath is a mode in which the first team to kill a certain number of units wins. Protect HQ (by far the most used) is a ruleset in which a player who loses their HQ for a certain period of time (about three minutes) loses.

Gluttony is a condition where the first player to collect a certain amount of resources wins. Deathmatch is a ruleset in which a player who loses all of their units is defeated.

The two opposing factions introduced in Dark Reign 2 are the Jovian Detention Authority a.k.a. JDA (which evolve to be the Imperium faction) and the Sprawlers (which later evolve to be the Freedom Guard faction of Dark Reign). The two sides are caught up in a conflict spanning Earth's 26th (and final) century. In the introduction, a Sprawler Leader who interacts with the player in the Sprawler campaign states:

The struggle between JDA and the Sprawlers is, at its heart, the struggle between authority and freedom, government and proletariat. As the earth reeled into ecological collapse, the JDA established large dome cities to protect the citizenry from the harsh conditions outside. However, they left behind all those who would not succumb to their dictatorial will: the Sprawlers. The disenfranchised Sprawlers are thus left in the outside world, bathed in the harsh conditions of a dying planet and fueled by the explosive rage of rebels fighting for a free life under the thumb of a cold overlord. Thus, the Sprawlers desperately fight to break into the dome cities, while the JDA desperately sally out into the decaying 'Sprawl' to keep them out and in a state of submission.

Dark Reign 2 underperformed commercially, and journalists Mark Asher and Tom Chick noted that it "didn't even hit PC Data's charts". Writing for CNET Gamecenter, Asher reported in September 2000 that the game's sales in the United States had reached 9,770 units, which drew revenues of $443,406. He remarked, "Activision has to be disappointed with that".