Let’s make one thing clear: I wouldn’t play Command and Conquer 4 if it was the game on Earth. It’s just not “me.” So pardon my blase attitude while I drop this bombshell: the game uses the same stupid DRM that Ubisoft now uses, which I complained about on CNN. Add this to your list of games not to buy, then.

Yeah, so the game, which came out two days ago, requiresa constant Internet connection in order to be played. EA claims this isn’t DRM, but if that’s the case I’d like to know what they call it. A rose by another name and such.

Says EA:

First thing to be clear about, Command & Conquer 4 has NO DRM. Zip, zero, zilch, none. We already made this clear.

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To play Command & Conquer 4, the computer needs to be connected to the internet. We’ve always made that clear as well.

EA does try to get on your good side by saying you don’t need to have the disc in the drive at all times in order to play, you can install and re-install the game as many times as you like, etc. So there is progress being made in The War on DRM.

So, we’ve just taken Toulon—let’s hope it doesn’t end at Waterloo.

Yes, I’m still on a Napoleon kick.

I don’t know, I’m pretty much a beaten man vis-à-vis fighting DRM. At this point I’m fully prepared to let the likes of Ubisoft send a man over every time I’d want to play one of their games. Not that I ever will again, but you know what I mean.

We’re huge fans of Command & Conquer here at CrunchGear, and we just got a great tip sent in. EA is giving away away free downloads of some of the great classic C&C games that made the franchise such a long standing favorite. This is most likely to draw attention to the upcoming release of C&C 4: Tiberian Twilight, (which I’ve been playing in beta, and it’s a whole lot of fun).

You can download Tiberian Sun (with the Firestorm expansion), Tiberian Dawn, and the best of the old ones, Red Alert. If you’ve got a hankering for some classic RTS gaming, just head over to EA’s download page and pick them up. Maybe I’ll see you online.

Thanks to Ian for the tip.

Command and Conquer has been around for ages, but the story is coming to an end with C&C4 according to everything the Internet is saying. You really should go back play last C&C 3 before the new one comes out, but this trailer really does a good job to set the C&C4 stage – or you could read Wikipedia. I can’t wait.

Have you been following the C&C4 news the last few days? Well, news that the title was under development “leaked” onto Twitter, which was followed up a few hours later by an official announcement from EA. But that stuff really isn’t news. Most could have guess that EA was working on another game in the never ending saga between the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod. What is news is this first tantalizing screenshot. We can’t wait. [via Kotaku]