On Tuesday, Electronic Arts announced that it had canceled its free-to-play reboot of the Command and Conquer franchise and shuttered Victory Games, the studio working on it, just a few months before the game's scheduled release date.
The reason for the cancellation, according to both fans of the game and its makers: It simply wasn't a very good game.
Before the news was revealed in a blog post, the new Command & Conquer was already available to some players in an incomplete alpha state.
"Your feedback from the alpha trial is clear," wrote a Victory Games rep. "We are not making the game you want to play."
This jibes with comments from players who tried out the alpha, who say that the free-to-play elements of Command & Conquer's design were intrusive and unwanted. Cathal Charker, a longtime fan of the series who lives in London, says that the purchasable upgrades in the game felt unbalanced and unfair.
"Despite how expensive they were, you didn't get an option to try them out before buying/using your credits to unlock them," Charker, 18, told WIRED via email. "This meant that more often than not I felt ripped off."
Charker says that he had been very excited for the release of the game since its announcement, but since he was able to get his hands on the alpha version, he'd been disappointed.
"I think it's for the best that it was killed off," he says. "It certainly had potential but I think going back to the drawing board is the best option."
Jeroen Amin, another player of the alpha, agreed with Charker's assessment, saying he "can't imagine" how Electronic Arts thought it was going to pull off redesigning Command & Conquer as a free-to-play game.
"It was far too simplistic for an RTS," Amin told WIRED in an email. "The gameplay was not conducive to developing personal styles of play."
Former Victory Games employees were not as happy about the closure, and some took to Twitter to express their disappointment. "Well that was fun. Victory Games is closed," tweeted the game's former marketing manager.
In an statement released to Game Informer, EA said that not everyone involved with the Command & Conquer game will be laid off.
"Wherever possible, we are working to help these talented people find other opportunities with EA," a rep said.
