One-off purchase
Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour cost to play
What Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour costs to play in the UK in 2026, how many people still play it on Steam, and how a 2003 strategy game got its source code released.
Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour gameplay, images and trailer
© Electronic Arts Inc., Command & Conquer Generals Steam store pages
The short version
- From £19.48: Cheapest standard price: Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection, 12 games incl. Generals and Zero Hour (Steam UK)
- One-off price: Bought once; no store currency or random items on this page
- 14 h to beat: Main story: 14 hours (HowLongToBeat)
- £1.39 an hour: £19.48 ÷ 14 hours (main story)
- 2,203 Steam peak: Peak concurrent players on Steam, last 30 days (Steam Charts)
- PEGI 16: Age rating
- Released
- 22 September 2003
- Developer
- EA Pacific
- Publisher
- Electronic Arts
- Platforms
- PC
- Age rating
- PEGI 16
- Genre
- Strategy
- Modes
- Single-player
On this page
Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour player count
Concurrent players on Steam, from Steam Charts, read 28 Oct 2026.
- Peak, last 30 days
- 2,315
- Peak, Sept 2026
- 2,203
- 1,208 on average
- Change vs Aug 2026
- −4%
- monthly peak
- All-time peak
- 2,459
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page.
Is Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour dead?
No. Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour peaked at 2,203 players at once on Steam in September 2026, with 1,208 playing at any moment on average. That is steady with the three months before. These are Steam players only.
| Month | Average | Peak | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 2026 | 1,208 | 2,203 | −3.8% |
| August 2026 | 1,341 | 2,289 | +6.6% |
| July 2026 | 1,255 | 2,147 | +6.0% |
| June 2026 | 1,175 | 2,026 | −13.5% |
| May 2026 | 1,367 | 2,343 | −4.7% |
| April 2026 | 1,411 | 2,459 | +11.4% |
| March 2026 | 1,280 | 2,208 | +8.7% |
| February 2026 | 1,172 | 2,031 | +3.7% |
| January 2026 | 1,165 | 1,958 | +4.2% |
| December 2025 | 1,106 | 1,879 | +5.3% |
| November 2025 | 1,047 | 1,784 | −6.1% |
| October 2025 | 1,051 | 1,899 | – |
What Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour costs to play
| Item | Price | Per | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection, 12 games incl. Generals and Zero Hour (Steam UK) | £19.48 | bundle | store.steampowered.com Checked 11 Nov 2026 |
| EA Play subscription, includes Generals and Zero Hour (Steam UK, monthly) | £5.99 | month | store.steampowered.com Checked 11 Nov 2026 |
| EA Play subscription (Steam UK, yearly) | £39.99 | year | store.steampowered.com Checked 3 Oct 2026 |
How long is Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour?
Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour takes about 14 hours to finish the main story, and about 28.5 hours to complete everything.
- Main story14 h
- Main + extras19.5 h
- Completionist28.5 h
Cost per hour (main story)
£1.39
£19.48 on Steam UK ÷ 14 h
Source: HowLongToBeat, read 28 Oct 2026. Your time will vary with difficulty and play style.
Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour guides and tools
Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour questions
How much does Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour cost in the UK?
Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection, 12 games incl. Generals and Zero Hour (Steam UK): £19.48. Prices checked 11 November 2026.
Is Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour free to play?
No. Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour is not free to play: you buy the game to play it.
How long is Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour?
Main story: about 14 hours. Main + extras: about 19.5 hours. Completionist: about 28.5 hours (HowLongToBeat). At £19.48, that's £1.39 per hour (main story).
What age rating is Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour?
Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour is rated PEGI 16.
How many people play Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour?
Peak concurrent players on Steam, last 30 days (Steam Charts): 2,203, checked 3 October 2026. Its all-time Steam peak is 2,459.
What is Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour's all-time Steam peak?
2,459 concurrent players on Steam, the highest Steam Charts has recorded for Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour (read 28 October 2026). The peak in the last 30 days was 2,315. Players on other stores and consoles aren't counted.
Is Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour dead?
No. Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour peaked at 2,203 players at once on Steam in September 2026, with 1,208 playing at any moment on average. That is steady with the three months before. These are Steam players only.
Do these Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour player numbers include consoles?
No. The player counts on this page are Steam only (Steam Charts, read 28 October 2026). People playing, through Game Pass or on other PC stores aren't counted, and publishers rarely publish those figures.
Who makes Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour?
Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour is developed by EA Pacific and published by Electronic Arts.
Command & Conquer: Generals came out in February 2003 and its expansion, Zero Hour, in September the same year. More than 20 years on it is still played every day: over the 30 days to 3 October 2026 Zero Hour peaked at 2,203 players online at once on Steam, against 314 for the original Generals. It has no in-game store, loot boxes or battle pass, so this page covers what it costs to get and how many people play. The longer story is in our history of Generals.
How it plays
Command & Conquer Generals is a real-time strategy game played from above on 3D battlefields. You command one of three sides, the US forces, the Chinese army or the Global Liberation Army (GLA), each with its own modern and near-future arsenal, from Aurora Strike Bombers to Dragon Tanks.
Zero Hour is the expansion. EA lists 15 new missions set at hot spots around the world, such as rooting out a splinter cell in Cairo or stealing toxins from a US lab, plus new units and 20 upgrades, including China's ECM Tank, the GLA's BattleBus and the USA's Spectre Gunship. It also adds battles against nine enemy generals, each with their own personality and tactics.
The Steam version lists single-player, a level editor and Steam Workshop support. Online play today runs on community services, covered under Playing online below.
What it costs
EA put both games on Steam on 7 March 2024. On Steam UK there are two ways in:
- Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection, 12 games including Generals and Zero Hour, for £19.48.
- EA Play, EA's subscription, which includes both games, from £5.99 a month or £39.99 a year.
Steam's store data for Zero Hour also lists a £0.00 package called "Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour – Free", and the Steam page for the original Generals labels its package "EA Play – Free". We read these as the licences that come with an EA Play subscription, not as free copies, so we haven't listed the game as free. Check the store page in your own account before you buy.
For comparison, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, the other long-lived strategy game we cover, costs £25.99 for the base game and keeps adding paid expansions.
The source code
On 27 February 2025 EA released the source code of Generals and Zero Hour on GitHub under the GPL v3 licence, alongside Red Alert, Renegade and the original Command & Conquer, and added Steam Workshop support for user maps. The code doesn't include the game's art or sound, and EA's notes say you must own the game to use what you build from it. Community projects have since used it to fix bugs and rebuild online play.
Playing online
EA's original online service ran on GameSpy, which closed in 2014. Players moved to community-run servers. The longest-running of them, C&C:Online, says it retired its Generals and Zero Hour service in 2026 and now points players to Generals Online, a new community service built on the released source code.
Players
The 30-day peak on Steam Charts was 2,203 concurrent players for Zero Hour on 3 October 2026, with 1,610 online at the time we checked. Its all-time Steam peak is 2,459, in April 2026. The original Generals peaked at 314 over the same 30 days. Players on the EA app, CD copies or other launchers aren't counted.
How we checked
Prices and ratings come from the Steam UK store page and Valve's store data, read on 3 October 2026. Release and source code details come from EA's own announcement and its GitHub repository. Player figures are from Steam Charts on the same day. The gameplay description is based on the publisher's Steam store pages for Generals and Zero Hour.
Card art and page images: screenshots from the Steam store pages for Command & Conquer Generals and Zero Hour. © Electronic Arts Inc. This website is not endorsed by or affiliated with EA or its licensors.
Official links: ea.com · Steam
Games like Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour
Guides and data
Sources
- Steam UK – Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour, published by store.steampowered.com
- Steam store data for app 2732960 (Valve) – PEGI and other ratings, published by store.steampowered.com
- Steam UK – Command & Conquer Generals (base game), published by store.steampowered.com
- EA – source code release and Steam Workshop support (27 Feb 2025), published by ea.com
- EA on GitHub – CnC_Generals_Zero_Hour source code (GPL v3), published by github.com
- Steam Charts – Generals Zero Hour, published by steamcharts.com
- C&C:Online FAQ, published by cnc-online.net
- Card art and page images – Command & Conquer Generals and Zero Hour Steam store screenshots (Electronic Arts Inc.), fan use under EA's content policy, published by help.ea.com
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