EA releases source code for Command & Conquer to modders

Electronic Arts has released the source code for Command & Conquer to a community of modders who like designing new levels for the vintage real-time strategy game.

It is a good move for the community, but it also tells me that EA sees no real way to make solid revenues on remakers of the real-time strategy brand, which was popular when I was growing up. That part makes me sad, but it’s worth facing reality.

Jim Vessella, C&C producer at EA, noted that the company launched the C&C Ultimate Collection on Steam last year. This was a positive step towards maintaining the legacy of Command & Conquer, but he said EA always had the ambition to deliver even more C&C franchise improvements to the community. 

So shortly after launch in 2024, EA commissioned Luke “CCHyper” Feenan (a veteran of the C&C community who was a part of our Community Council for the C&C Remastered Collection). Feenan was also involved in bringing the C&C Ultimate Collection to Steam back in March 2024.

EA asked Feenan to officially research improvements to many of the games in the Ultimate Collection. With full access to the C&C Archive at EA, Feenan proposed a couple ambitious ideas on behalf of the community, and over the past year, he has devoted himself to deliver upon these initiatives.

In a statement, Feenan said, “For those of you awesome C&C fans who I have not crossed paths with before, my name is Luke Feenan, aka. “CCHyper”. I’m a 20+ year veteran of the C&C Community, a long time modder, and an Admin of CnCNet. I was also very fortunate to have been involved in the development of the C&C Remastered Collection under the mentorship of Jim Vessella.”

Over the past year he has worked alongside the C&C stakeholders at EA to restore the Perforce source code archives for the C&C games back to buildable states, which now provides the team with the ability to patch these classic games in a deeper way going forward. 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, Feenan said.

It’s almost five years ago now that EA released the source code for the C&C Remastered Collection DLL files. This release received praise across the video games industry, and has enabled the community to create amazing content for the Remastered Collection. In reaction to the restoration process of the C&C archives, EA is now releasing the fully recovered source code for Command & Conquer (aka, Tiberian Dawn) and C&C Red Alert under the GPL license.

This will empower those in the community who continue to create content for these classic entries in the franchise, and Feenan hopes it will aid communities like CnCNet to continue to support these games and keep them playable for future generations to come.

Feenan said the community over at W3DHub has done great things with the C&C Renegade engine for almost 20 years now and their projects have been pushing the absolute limits of the game. To support them in taking the game and their awesome projects to the next level, EA is also releasing the complete source code for C&C Renegade under the GPL license.

“All of us here are all really excited to see what’s next in store for the community over at W3DHub and what they will be able to do with this release,” Feenan said.

And finally, in appreciation of the C&C Generals community who have kept the game alive with their consistent energy and passion, hosting multiplayer tournaments, and producing amazing content, Feenan said the company is releasing the full source code under GPL for C&C Generals and its expansion pack, Zero Hour.

“I know the Generals/ZH community is going to do amazing things with this source code release, and I’m excited to see what the team over at C&C Online does next with the multiplayer experience for these games,” Feenan said.

EA also said it is enabling the Steam Workshop support for more C&C titles to allow users to upload their custom maps. This has been an ask from the community for a very long time so EA can finally give map creators an official and permanent home on the Steam Workshop for content.

Now Steam Workshop support has gone live for: C&C Renegade, C&C Generals & Zero Hour, C&C 3 Tiberium Wars and Kane’s Wrath, C&C Red Alert 3 & Uprising and C&C 4 Tiberian Twilight.

EA has also updated all the Mission Editor and World Builder tools so you can publish maps directly to the Steam Workshop. When you subscribe to an item on the Steam Workshop (via the Client or webpage), the games will now pull that content down when you next launch the game and the maps will be displayed in the singleplayer/multiplayer map selection menus.

“We’re all looking forward to seeing what fun and crazy maps you upload,” Feenan said.

EA is releasing a “C&C Modding Support” pack which contains the source Xml, Schema, Script, Shader and Map files for all the games that use the SAGE engine. This has been another wish from the community for almost 15 years now so Feenan said he is excited to finally make this happen, and it should help the community to make amazing content and mods for the years to come.

“I would like to take a moment to thank all of our Community Playtesters who have supported us throughout this journey with their invaluable feedback and encouragement, also a big thank you to everyone who has reported bugs and issues for the C&C games on Reddit and Steam,” Feenan said. “And of course to the whole C&C community for supporting these games for over 25+ years.”

Feenan thanked the team at EA working at various studios and departments across the globe who have helped make this happen (there are just too many to name!). Their support for this project and the C&C franchise was really motivating during the final push to launch. He also thanked EA Partners and supporters including technical director Brian Barnes and Vessella.

Vessella said that, as with previous modding initiatives, user generated content for C&C titles fall under the Command & Conquer Franchise Modding Guidelines, which have been updated to reflect this initiative. Kudos to EA. As we’ve seen lately, there are worse fates for aging game properties.