Gamers on Linux have seen how dismissive Electronic Arts can be when they don't care about Linux as a platform. Heck, even gamers on Windows have been treated badly with things like broken games at launch day, microtransactions, and other questionable practices.
So, it was a real surprise for us when EA announced that they were open sourcing four games from their Command & Conquer (C&C) franchise.
Let's dive into this completely unexpected move. 😃
EA Open Sources C&C Games: What to Expect?
Source: Electronic Arts
Addressing the C&C community, Jim Vessella, Lead Producer at EA, shared that they had recruited Luke “CCHyper” Feenan back in 2024, giving him full access to the C&C archive, after which he had proposed some big ideas on behalf of the community.
If you didn't know, Luke is a veteran of the C&C community who has been involved with the C&C Remastered Collection and has worked on introducing the C&C Ultimate Collection to Steam.
Over the past year or so, he worked alongside other C&C developers to deliver on some of his proposals. One of which has been to open source four Command & Conquer titles, which are still cherished in the C&C community.
First up are Command & Conquer (also referred to as Tiberian Dawn) and C&C Red Alert, which have been open sourced under the GPL, allowing anyone to use, modify, and redistribute the original or modified version of the games.
Similarly, C&C Renegade and C&C Generals (incl Zero Hour) have also been open sourced under GPL. The decision to liberate these games was inspired by the passionate communities that have kept these games alive and thriving.
In the coming months, we can expect new ports and enhanced versions of these games to enter the scene. It's nice to see that EA does such good deeds occasionally, and giving back to the community is a good thing to do.
Personally, I'm looking forward to running some cool Linux C&C ports on my computer, as I have never really played anything from the Command & Conquer series.
That was it for this one. You can go through the official announcement blog to learn about the introduction of Steam Workshop support for many C&C games.
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