It sounds like that’s what happened, but through the proper channels. They hired a known CnC community/modding site admin as the dev.
I’d imagine he pitched that this was an easy way to reduce maintenance costs while fostering massive good will and making the amount of long tail sales over time higher.
That’s actually kind of a brilliant concept that should serve as an example for other video game publishers then: open-source the program so that it can be maintained by the community, but require a license to use the artwork. The community could eventually recreate and even improve the artwork anyway.
Almost like a mistake?
I think the old Westwood dev they put in charge of the franchise just doesn’t have any oversight.
That would be a completely legendary move if the dev hired by EA just said “fuck it, I’m open-sourcing this shit!”
It sounds like that’s what happened, but through the proper channels. They hired a known CnC community/modding site admin as the dev.
I’d imagine he pitched that this was an easy way to reduce maintenance costs while fostering massive good will and making the amount of long tail sales over time higher.
That’s actually kind of a brilliant concept that should serve as an example for other video game publishers then: open-source the program so that it can be maintained by the community, but require a license to use the artwork. The community could eventually recreate and even improve the artwork anyway.