And another Command & Conquer game bites the dust: EA has just axed the latest in the longrunning strategy series, the company announced today.
“Your feedback from the alpha trial is clear: We are not making the game you want to play,” a rep for developer Victory Games wrote in a blog post published this afternoon. “That is why, after much difficult deliberation, we have decided to cease production of this version of the game.”
Originally announced as Command & Conquer: Generals 2 at the 2011 Spike VGAs, this incarnation of Command & Conquer was to be a free-to-play game for PC. It entered alpha during the summer.
On top of the cancellation, as spotted by Polygon, employees of Victory Games are tweeting that EA has shut the studio down. Victory Games, an LA-based studio that has been working on this new Command & Conquer game for three years now, has not released any other games.
Here’s the full blog post announcing the game’s cancellation:
Generals,
Thank you for your participation over the last few months in the Command & Conquer closed alpha test. It’s been much appreciated, and you’ve been instrumental in helping define what a new Command & Conquer experience should and shouldn’t be.
Part of being in a creative team is the understanding that not all of your choices are going to work out. In this case, we shifted the game away from campaign mode and built an economy-based, multiplayer experience. Your feedback from the alpha trial is clear: We are not making the game you want to play. That is why, after much difficult deliberation, we have decided to cease production of this version of the game. Although we deeply respect the great work done by our talented team, ultimately it’s about getting you the game you expect and deserve.
Over the next 10 days we will be refunding any and all money spent in the alpha. If you have a question about your refund, please contact help.ea.com.
We believe that Command & Conquer is a powerful franchise with huge potential and a great history, and we are determined to get the best game made as soon as possible. To that end, we have already begun looking at a number of alternatives to get the game back on track. We look forward to sharing more news about the franchise as it develops. Thank you again for your participation and support.
– Victory Studios
This is the fourth Command & Conquer game to be cancelled in the past decade. Maybe the series is cursed? EA shut down Westwood Studios, the company behind the iconic real-time strategy series, back in 2003, and many fans would argue that the series has not been the same since.
Comments
37 responses to “EA Cancels Command & Conquer”
As painful as it is to hear news like that for some people, it’s a brilliant move by EA to understand that it was not want the CONSUMER wanted and not release a below average game. Good move!
They aren’t doing it because they want a happy fanbase, they are doing it because projected revenue doesn’t exceed expenditure. It’s EA, you have to remain cynical and assume the worst…
Victory games had the bioware label attached at some point did it not?
Yup, EA have a habit of changing developers names.
Apparently they think using a successful studio’s name and attach it somewhere else helps marketing and ‘its made by those guys’ appeal, no matter how irrelevant.
Hell, they call their LA Studio – DICE now too, cause of Battlefields success.
Heh so they removed biowares name from the company before canceling the project. Not that it would have done much harm to the bioware name – its already well and truly in the mud atm. Ever since EA bought bioware out i don’t think they’ve released a single good game – last one was dragon age: origins. They’ve just taken far to many shortcuts with the new games – or watered them down for mass market, so much so that they alienated their core players – you know the people that made them who they are.
In the Mud for you, maybe.
Shouldn’t you be pissed at Bioware for letting them get bought out? EA are just doing what any large business does, no one forced Bioware to sign up with EA.
The sale happened tho, nothing can be done about that – it’d be bitching for the point of bitching. EA chewing up yet another company then spitting out the remains, is something that can change. It’s not like ea turns these acquisitions into a fountain of profit – just look at there last quarterly results. Niche markets exist and can be quite profitable, not superstar status, but then again every game doesn’t need to be. Diluting games for mass appeal by and large has not really worked wonders for EA – an example being DA:2.
Good news! Generals 2 wasn’t “fun” to play IMO. Bring back Generals 1 in all its HD glory I say!
and in keeping wih current times EA will now charge thosr who participated in the Alpha.
Seriously though,sad that we won’t get a new C&C any time soon, but seeing as how I’ve barely touched C&C3, Red Alert 3 or C&C 4, this is probably for the best
Yeah. I really enjoyed C&C 3, which was the first time I’d enjoyed C&C since the original and Red Alert. RA3’s style shat me to tears, but hey – they were trying new things. Really not sure where there is left to go with it.
Oddly enough… i’m the complete opposite.
I loved RA3 + expansions for changing the game a bit (even if the factions were so imba xD). CnC3? I just could not get into it. The gameplay just bored me to tears and the three factions just weren’t unique enough (yes I know the Scrin was an attempt to copy Toss from SC =P)
That being said… whoever approved CnC4 should be tarred and feathered and dragged out the back and shot. I played 2 hours and just could not force myself to play any further. Horribly broken system and goddess awful story (yes thats compared to ALL previous CnC “storylines”.. ONOZ! MY WIFE WHO I ONLY SAW LAST MISSION FOR 2-3 MINUTES DIED! I care because….?)
The statement that they released said that they will be refunding those who participated within the next ten days.
good job EA… it was pretty horrible
Generals Zero Hour is my absolute favourite RTS of all time. I was really looking forward to this game… now I’m just going to have a cry.
Zero Hour is also my favourite, though I was not looking forward to this abomination at all. It’s for the best.
Hopefully, them admitting that this wasn’t the game we wanted means they may actually attempt a proper Generals 2 down the line, though I suspect this is just wishful thinking on my part.
I completely agree. But it does sound like it was to be a different game altogether. Better to hear it on a blog than forking out cash to realise this for ourselves. Lets hope for our sake they do make a new Zero hour. It was the best C&C to date.
Developer: “I’m sorry EA, but we really can’t turn an RTS into Call of Duty.”
EA: “You’re fired!”
Oh man… I wish Westwood was still around and I wish another C&C game was coming. A new Tiberiun Sun would be the best. Hell I would even be happy with a new Dune RTS. Remember how great Dune 2 by Westwood was?
Dune 2 is probably my favourite RTS game to date. Others have come and gone, but few had the enduring setting appeal that that game had.
Where the frack did all my harvesters go???
DAMN YOU SANDWORMS!!!
Man why can’t they just release a decent C&C game. I agree with Funke above, C&C generals was the last really great C&C game I think. It was fantastic I thought.
It’s simple to me, have game with 3 unique factions each with different strategies and some interesting level designs that utilise those different strats. Why does that seem so hard for developers?
“Let’s make it online only!” “Let’s make it pay to win!” “Let’s make the most boring levels in a while with very little seperating the factions tactics!” ugh.
Man oh man I am hankering for a new top quality RTS, where’s a new RTS warcraft when you need it.. in the mean time, how long until ep 3 of starcraft 2?
I want them to re-make War Wind.
All they really had to do was improve on Generals by pumping up the visuals and putting environment destruction into it.. My ideal C&C would be a mix of the original and Generals.
I kind of didn’t mind the game while it was in alpha, it almost felt like generals but the feel was off and as an Australian I could never get a match with other players. I really was going this game was going to bring me back into RTS since starcraft 2s online never worked for me (I stopped waiting for an automatch queue after 20 minutes and went to world of tanks instead)
Man, Tanks has got it down pretty well. I don’t play real often, but it’s a great 15min time-killer, and if you WANT to spend more time on it, the fact that you don’t have to wait for the match to complete before jumping into a different tank? That’s bloody genius.
Just fucking sell the IP to Blizzard so we can get a good C&C game already…..
No I don’t want my C&C to be destroyed by blizzard and their stupid battle. net account breach notifications that i used to get pestered with until I removed all payment information and moved the account to an email address that I’ll never retrieve emails on.
also EA have more or less owned Command & Conquer since Tiberius Sun
All I can say is f*ck you EA.
I loved C&C up to Zero Hour.
I loved Yuri’s revenge and RA3 was okay until they tried to make it a ‘competitive style rts’
.. Man does anyone remember how awesome c&c renegade was?! Would have been my first online FPS game.
I remember that back in Ra2 days that playing online was such an awesome feeling.
How could they fuck something up so simple?
we never really asked for much just carry on the same formula, same format, continue the story line/s and add new relevant content (units, building ect…)
🙁
Was really looking forward to Generals 2. I thought they knew the fans wanted Generals 2, not some other game. Considering Generals was imo the best RTS to date, and Ive played heaps of RTS games. It makes sense to basically make an updated Generals game. Surely it is not that hard, they have all the framework of the game! But alias they tried something new and it didnt work. In a way I`m happy that I wont be playing a game that is sold as C&C but is actually not, like what happened with Hitman Absolution (I wish I never played that game because it very badly tainted the Hitman franchise by removing everything that made Hitman great.)
I wonder what the general feedback was from the alpha that managed to convince them to pull the plug?
There would’ve had to have been a lot of it.
“Hmm, for this game we ended up getting a million more death threats than usual, maybe they’re trying to tell us something”
I’m a long time C&C fan but damn, why couldn’t this have happened to C&C 4? That game was… it wasn’t good. But more importantly it wasn’t the end to Kane I would have liked to see.
Agreed, although it was awesome seeing Kane finally admit that he’s been guiding humanity for thousands of years, working towards a single goal.
Brotherhood of nod
I have never been so happy.
Though I hope the people who’ve lost their jobs can find somewhere better to put their talents to work. I’m glad EA isn’t further destroying C&C with Free to Pay nonsense.
EA has always been a failure, lets face it. I only joined the fanbase of C&C during C&C3 and RA3 (in that order), but I immediately noticed how little work was actually put into those games, which led me to believe that they were planning something big, perhaps a REALLY good C&C. I was disappointed. Greatly. Then, moments before posting this, I noticed something interesting: EA was killing C&C on purpose. C&C4 was made with more cartoony graphics than RA3 because they wanted people to NOT want the game. They got the name (Tiberian) wrong so people would NOT get the game and ask EA to never make a game again. They removed all the aspects that strategy fans want in an RTS (base building, medium-speed gameplay, good ambiance, more than 2 teams, resources collection. To name a few) and replaced them with a combo of FPS and bad cartoons. It was like mixing Borderlands with a bad Starcraft 2 arcade Hero battle game, and also a small nerd capable of making some form of strategy for the game, and finally adding in the only game mode which just happens to be Capture-the-Flag + King-of-the-Hill. Then, because people are still wanting C&C even after what I’ll call “The blunder of the 4 horsemen” because of this horrible curse that appears during the 4th main instalment of a game, they decided to create the oh-so-horrible Tiberium Alliances, which was made to anger and simultaneously please C&C fans by giving them a game that was so slow paced you made noticeable progress once or twice a month. That managed to stop the rest of us, and EA now shows how little they care by not even making RTS games anymore. Give an excuse to all of that EA. Tell us why you say this isn’t true.
This has been Colonel F. Risky II, thank you, and good night.