The history of C&C Generals: 23 years from launch to open source

Most strategy games from 2003 are remembered, not played. Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour is still played by a couple of thousand people at a time on Steam alone, more than 23 years after it came out. Here is how it got there. (For today's price, player count and age rating, see our Generals Zero Hour price and player count page.)

Timeline

February 2003. EA Pacific releases Command & Conquer: Generals for Windows: 11 February in North America and 14 February in Europe. It moves the series to a near-future setting with three sides, the USA, China and the GLA, and to a new 3D engine.

September 2003. The expansion, Zero Hour, follows from EA Los Angeles: 22 September in North America and 26 September in Europe. It adds new units and the Generals Challenge mode.

2014. GameSpy, the service EA used for online play, shuts down, and with it the game's official multiplayer. Players move to community-run servers that imitate the old service, most notably C&C:Online.

7 March 2024. EA puts Generals and Zero Hour on Steam, playable without the EA app. On Steam UK they come with an EA Play subscription or in the 12-game Ultimate Collection, now £19.48.

27 February 2025. EA releases the source code of Generals and Zero Hour on GitHub under the GPL v3 licence, together with the code for the original Command & Conquer, Red Alert and Renegade, and adds Steam Workshop support for user maps. The code doesn't include the game's art, sound or music; to use what you build, you still need to own the game.

April 2026. Zero Hour hits its highest player count on Steam so far: 2,459 at once.

2026. C&C:Online says it has retired its Generals and Zero Hour service and points players to Generals Online, a new community service built on a fork of EA's released code.

Why the source code mattered

Without its online service, an old multiplayer game depends on fans keeping it working. Before 2025 they had to do that without the code, by imitating the old servers and patching the game from the outside. Releasing the code under an open licence let the community fix bugs and build new online play directly. EA kept the rights to the art and sound, so the game itself still has to be bought.

How many people still play

Over the 30 days to 11 November 2026, Zero Hour peaked at 2,267 players online at once on Steam, and the original Generals at 314. Those counts leave out players on the EA app, CD copies and other launchers. For comparison, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, a remaster of a 1999 game, peaked at 28,690 over the same period.

How we checked

Release dates for 2003 come from the games' Wikipedia entries. The Steam release date, prices and player figures are from Steam and Steam Charts, read on 11 November 2026. The source code details are from EA's announcement and its GitHub repository. The change of online service is from C&C:Online's own FAQ.