C&C Labs News Wire

— Tuesday, April 24, 2007 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 4:59:47 PM ET

Word Out of EA on Cheats, Bugs, Patches

First, a number of cheats and exploits have been popping up for C&C 3 lately. Cypher on the official C&C 3 forums said the following:
Hey guys,

I'd like to ask all of you NOT to post specifics of exploits and cheats you find.
At least, not in public. This will not help speed things up, but would only hinder the team's progress in fixing the issues.

By all means, do post warning posts about such things, if you want. But don't tell everyone the specifics of the exploits or cheats - instead, PM them directly to me and I will pass it along to the team.

Contrary to what some of you might think, posting publicly specifics of the exploits, will not speed the fix along. It's proven, and has been that way even in the old Westwood days. Back then there was even a semi organized group that claimed to have been dedicated to exposing cheats of Westwood games. All they managed to do was enrage many other fans.

There were quite a few patches till now, and at the moment the team is working on the first really major patch. All these issues we see on the forums are being tracked and studied to be fixed.

So, please, have patience and if you see anything (traines, hacks, cheats, exploits, bugs), PM the specifics directly to me.
I have not seen this play surface too much in online play, but, knowing very well the nature of the exploit, I can say that once it does, online play for C&C 3 will stagnate quickly. If EA wants fans to enjoy the multiplayer aspects of C&C 3, fixing this exploit immediately is imperative.

Also, Senior Development Director Chris Corry commented on the future patch and the state of online play, saying:
As many of you are painfully aware, we've had some problems (I'm risking understatement here) with the timely and accurate reporting of match stats. When these issues first arose, my first reaction was, "Yikes! We've got to fix this issue fast -- but at least it should be pretty straightforward." Boy, was I ever wrong. It turns out that the stats issues we've been seeing are not the result of a single bug but are several different problems that are all interrelated and only show up when the system is under extreme load. The good news is that most, although not all, of these problems have been resolved. [...]

Once again, we really, really want to apologize to you if you’ve had a less than smooth experience with multiplayer. We are making good progress but as the above notes show, we've still got a ways to go. We will keep at it until it’s right. Mike and I, and the entire team, have been overwhelmed by the response that the game has been receiving. There are obviously many, many people having a great time with the game, which is the main reason why most of us have chosen this career. Thank you for the kind words and we look forward to lots of exciting C&C3 news in the weeks and months to come.
Once again, it's good to see that EA is working on these things, but I think any fan familiar with the concept of a release date expects that on said date, the game playing experience will indeed be released. A large part of that is multiplayer. The troubles EA's had, both with the large number of bugs--hundreds have been confirmed internally--the exploits that threaten to take online player offline until they are fixed, and the issues with the servers, do not reflect well on them.

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