Command and Conquer community manager laments EA decision

Eric Krause, global community manager over at the now shuttered Victory games and recent top dog in the development of Command and Conquer, has posted up a message on the game's official forums, lamenting EA's decision to kill the game off so close to its release, suggesting that if the team had just been given a bit more time, they'd have come up with something great.

Victory games was set up by EA in 2010 specifically to handle its CnC franchise, at the time developing Generals 2. That was eventually scrapped and turned into the free to play Command and Conquer, though now that too has been shelved and the developer behind it closed for good.

“I am actually very sad to see my favorite franchise being put to rest, especially that sudden and a game close to launching,” began Krause. While the game wasn't exactly ready, it was well into its alpha phase, with patches flying out every day to polish it up. Ultimately though, EA said that it didn't feel the game was going in the right direction and opted to shut it all down.

Krause did say, that he was aware that the game wasn't there yet and that it would have taken a few more months to really nail it. However he did think they'd get there eventually.

“Did we do everything right – Hell no! But we were a talented team that made a lot out of what we had. But with your help and those die-hard gamers within the studio, we were trying to influence and challenge more and more of those “given” mechanics – the status quo – to make a game that could wear the C&C badge with pride.”

“Our future roadmap looked also much more promising – Crushing would have been added with the patch this monday together with the first part of our movement/pathfinding overhaul and we had announced campaign missions at GamesCom.”

Look they even had the supply drop points. Maaaan, this would have been awesome.

Unfortunately for Krause and the team though, that's not something EA wanted to wait for. While the community manager did suggest that he thinks he knows why it was shut down, he's not able to go into it and believes there could be more to the story. It will be interesting to see if he's more open about his feelings on it if/when he gets a job at another developer.

This leaves the future of the RTS giant somewhat uncertain. Command and Conquer helped pioneer the genre but it's been a long time since it had a worthy game added to its roster.

“Unfortunately I don't know what will happen to Command & Conquer,” said Krause. “While I hope that the franchise will finally get a worthy new instalment to positively overshadow C&C4 and the cancellation of this attempt, I don't think that it will happen any time soon.”

Krause then went on to thank everyone involved in the game, especially the moderating team, who had to deal with the negative backlash when the game was changed from Generals 2 to Command and Conquer.
He ultimately signed off with: “Bottom line is THANK YOU for being a great Community (outside of the typical trolls you find everywhere in modern days).”

KitGuru Says: I am genuinely bummed that we never got a decent Generals sequel. The original might not have been the best strategy game ever, but I played it for years and years – a new one would have gotten me hooked I'm sure.

[Cheers PCgamesN]

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