Needless to say, Electronic Arts’s upcoming release of Command & Conquer Remastered Collection is on more than a few people’s radars. These classic games are getting the full treatment from EA in honor of their 25th anniversary as well. Producer Jim Vessella has announced launch detail updates showcasing a seemingly rare occurrence for PC games.
Today we are proud to announce that alongside the launch of the Remastered Collection, Electronic Arts will be releasing the TiberianDawn.dll and RedAlert.dll and their corresponding source code under the GPL version 3.0 license. This is a key moment for Electronic Arts, the C&C community, and the gaming industry, as we believe this will be one of the first major RTS franchises to open source their source code under the GPL. It’s worth noting this initiative is the direct result of a collaboration between some of the community council members and our teams at EA. After discussing with the council members, we made the decision to go with the GPL license to ensure compatibility with projects like CnCNet and Open RA. Our goal was to deliver the source code in a way that would be truly beneficial for the community, and we hope this will enable amazing community projects for years to come.
The details do not stop there, either. Mod support for the remastered collection will now include a new map editor. Players will be allowed to customize everything from custom units, art, and even change the gameplay logic. They’ve already been tinkering with a number of “what if?” scenarios on their Discord channel. One such scenario has seen the creation of a tank called the Nuke Tank. They’ve also managed to make options available to both Steam and Origin users. C&C Remastered Collection will launch on both platforms on June 5th.
For Steam players, we’re utilizing the Steam Workshop for sharing both maps and mods. Players can subscribe to maps and mods directly in the game’s Community Hub within Steam or utilize in-game menus to browse / download content as well. Origin players can use the same in-game process for downloading maps but will need to manually install mods into their respective folders outside the game. For both versions, once you’re in the game, you may navigate to the Options / Mods tab where you can then activate the mod. We’re aiming to put together further documentation on uploading content and the entire UGC process around the launch window.
The Bad News
Unfortunately, there is a little bit of bad news. Due to the impact of COVID-19, and the challenges to develop while social distancing, the remastered collection will not support LAN Play at launch. They do intend to keep it a priority and will update on progress as much as possible. One final note is that the 30-day pre-order window for the boxed collections closed last month on April 10th. These limited-edition versions will contain a plethora of items fans would be interested in. If you missed it, you may want to check online for those who are selling theirs, but expect it to be costly, since the 25th Anniversary Edition originally had a pre-order price of $149.
