EA is "releasing the fully recovered source code" for 4 classic Command & Conquer titles, and it's the best thing a major publisher can do for game preservation
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Back in 2020, alongside the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, EA released a portion of the source code for Red Alert and the original game. Now, five years later, that code has been "fully recovered" and made public alongside the source code for Renegade and Generals.
"Over the past year I have been working alongside the amazing C&C stakeholders here at EA to restore the Perforce source code archives for the C&C games back to buildable states, which now provides us with the ability to patch these classic games in a deeper way going forward," community veteran Luke "CCHyper" Feenan, who also worked with EA on the release of the Remastered Collection, says in today's announcement. "As a long time modder, it was amazing to finally get a chance to deep dive into the source code for these games and see how they work!"
The full source code for all four games is now available on the EA GitHub page. Feenan notes that "for those of you in the community who know me, you will be familiar with my strong advocacy for video game preservation and my support for the video game open-source community." Indeed, the release of code like this is perhaps the best gesture a major publisher like EA can make toward game preservation.
Remasters - like the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection itself - can help keep a game available to modern audiences, but technology is going to keep marching on, and someday the official versions C&C will almost certainly be left behind again. The release of source code like this gives the community incredible options to keep these games in working shape for years to come.
But game preservation is also about more than just making sure everyday gamers can keep playing old classics. It's also about saving the history of how these games came to be. One of the big efforts of the Video Game History Foundation is preserving "source" - not just code, but the art and other assets used in a game's creation. Source code often offers some of the greatest insights available on a game's development, and it's equally valuable to modders and historians.
For most publishers, the idea of "preservation" starts and ends with reselling old games back to you, which is why I'm so happy to see EA go the extra mile with Command & Conquer here. (If only it'd take that same step with The Sims.) Here's hoping more publishers follow that lead.
Of course, the most immediate benefit of having source available is for modders, and there's more news on the modding front, too. EA is also enabling Steam Workshop support for Renegade, Generals, Tiberium Wars, Red Alert 3, and Tiberian Twilight, allowing you to easily download custom maps. The Mission Editor and World Builder tools have also been updated to let modders directly upload their creations to the Workshop.
Command & Conquer remains a mainstay among the best RTS games.
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