Down to the Last Save make that save roll!

Constant Internet connection required for Command and Conquer 4

Over at the Command and Conquer Den, the community manager APOC(Aaron Kaufman) announced that those who play Command and Conquer 4 will always have to be connected to the internet. It stems from a Q&A session with Jeremy Feasel. When playing C&C 4 you will always have to be connected to the internet, much like a MMO; or sort of like a Steam game, but those have offline mode (maybe C&C 4 will too).

This is primarily due to our "player progression" feature so everything can be tracked. C&C 4 is not an MMO in the sense of World of Warcraft, but conceptually it has similar principles for being online all the time. While some may be taken aback by this, we've been testing this feature internally with all of our world-wide markets.

So it sounds like C&C 4 will be optimized so that even a dial up connection will suffice and that it won't lag out your single player game and it won't hurt the multiplayer aspect either.

The announcement for a constant online connection for Command and Conquer 4 doesn't surprise me that much. Games like Company of Heroes already require you to sign in before playing singleplayer or LAN. Granted Company of Heroes doesn't have a player progression feature. Even Blizzard announced that there would be no LAN play for StarCraft II. Just another means of DRM in video games; this allows EA to validate the Command and Conquer install and prevent any pirates from playing single player.

I would guess that the need for a constant connection is also there to prevent people from cheesing their starts before they are uploaded to the C&C 4 servers. It worked pretty well for Company of Heroes after the Opposing Fronts Expansion; but as always, there are ways to get around it.

The MMO like concept of player progression in Command and Conquer 4 does seem very interesting and I would love to hear more about it. Looks like a type of leader board setup with experience tracking, games player, etc. Seems that there will be more info about Command and Conquer 4 and the MMO portion in a few weeks when the info hits the magazines.

We can elaborate more on gameplay details after all the magazines hit, plenty of details for you to check in those! Gamestar will have a very extensive story.

What do you think? A integral part of C&C 4, harmful DRM, or just intrusive? Leave a comment and let me know what your opinion is about Command and Conquer 4 requiring a constant connection.

Here are some related posts

• Why pirating doesn’t hurt video game developers
• DRM: A Tale of two Publishers
• Review: Command and Conquer 4 Beta First Impressions