Command and Conquer series saved from GameSpy shutdown thanks to community effort

Games for Windows Live might kinda sorta still be going for the time being (despite rumours that its death would occur on July 1st), but multiplayer server thingamajig GameSpy is definitely, definitely dead. EA's Command & Conquer games were among the casualties , but after only a short amount of downtime, C&C3 and Kane's Wrath, Red Alert 3, Generals and Generals: Zero Hour are once again playable online. This isn't EA's doing, but rather a community effort over at the aptly named C&C: Online . Details below.

C&C: Online is free, but you will need to sign up for an account to be able to play these games online. Not everything is working at the moment - statistics, ranking and automatch are all out for the time being - but you will be able to host, join and play games, and chat with other players while you wait for your skills to be aggregated and compared against your rivals. Here's a tutorial video showing how to set the system up:

(Thanks, Blue's News .)

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Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.