While EA is making AI a key pillar of how its studios make future titles, it hasn’t forgotten about its back catalog of popular games. Its latest efforts have seen the company open source code for several games from the Command and Conquer franchise. It’s a massive win for game preservation that should earn the company some goodwill from the gaming community.
EA released the original source code for Command and Conquer, C&C Red Alert, C&C Renegade, and C&C Generals. The code for these games can be found on the company’s GitHub page and is available under a GPL license. Although it’s important to note that EA didn’t include game assets or cinematics as part of this open source effort. Even with the omission of the assets though, this will still be incredibly helpful for the modding community.
Getting access to the source code isn’t the only win for modders. EA is also bringing Steam Workshop support alongside a “Modding Support” pack for all the titles in the franchise that make use of the SAGE game engine. This will include several helpful tools, including shader and map files, source XML files, schemas and scripts. The games that will benefit are C&C Renegade, C&C Generals and Zero Hour, C&C 3 Tiberium Wars and Kane’s Wrath, C&C Red Alert 3 and Uprising, and C&C 4 Tiberian Twilight.
EA should be applauded for making this decision. It will enable these games to get additional community created content such as new maps, while also opening the door to some potential quality of life improvements, like support for ultrawide monitors and higher refresh rates. Hopefully other publishers and studios see the good work EA is doing and decide to jump on board the open source train as well.