
EA has confirmed that the final installment of its RTS franchise Command & Conquer will be unplayable for anyone without a constant internet connection.
While this means that the game will ship without any kind of DRM, many fans of the series are angry about the restrictions it will place on their gaming.
Since even the single-player campaign requires a live connection, it will no longer be possible to play C&C in situations where it may be hard or impossible to go online – for example, on buses, trains, or flights.
LAN play, which has been a staple of C&C players since the game’s first appearance in the mid-‘90s, is also set to suffer from EA’s decision thanks to the difficulties involved with connecting multiple machines on a local area network to the internet.
C&C has long set the benchmark for strategy game sales, but with EA’s decision so at odds with a large segment of its core fanbase it will be interesting to see how well the final game in the series performs once it goes on sale next year.
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