red alert 2 mod legal question

This is kenosis from modding community. Just want some EA official announcements. Though I remember some time EA had multiple mods on RA2yr forums but the whole site is now gone.

@Grape_Eater

Back when there was still a community manager for C&C, they actively supported and promoted the modding community.

Since there is no community manager for C&C anymore, though, there is no one to give that official announcement. The official stance of EA towards C&C, at the moment, seems to be one of complete and utter disinterested indifference.  😞

So yeah. They fired the entire C&C team when Generals 2 was canned, in 2014, so there is no one currently employed at EA for C&C, besides some people on Tiberium Alliances. Best you can do is take their older positive stance on things and, combined with the current indifference, conclude that the chances you'll ever get sued for modding-related things is pretty much nonexistent.

@Grape_Eater

Do note, while I wouldn't go as far as talking of "voiding a warranty" (after all a clean reinstall should get rid of a mod), you obviously can't expect official tech support to be much help on a modded game. After all, the very purpose of mods is to make the game behave differently, and they are known to occasionally cause crashes simply because of bugs in the mod's own coding.

So if you have problems on mods which you do not have on vanilla games, I suggest seeking out the mod's own forum or other way of contacting its creators, and getting help from them.

This is especially true on Red Alert 2 mods, with the frequent use of injectors like Ares and other exe mods that expand modding capability; this means not just the normally moddable ini stuff, but even the program itself is modified. Though the use of exe hacks is getting increasingly popular in modding on TS, RA1 and C&C1 as well, since we're learning more and more about the internals of these games.

Well. I am one of the big names in the ra2yr modding community I guess. I pretty know all about the popular engine hacks and was in the NPExt project back then.

So the conclusion is EA officially supported modding in the old times but since cnc is dead now, EA no longer cares.

@Grape_Eater

Pretty much, yea.

@Grape_Eater To back up Nyerguds' point, we generally don't have a problem with mods. 

Hacks/cheats that affect multiplayer experiences/game economies are what we crack down on, but mods/custom content isn't something we go after. 

One more question, what's EA's attitude towards community patches like the old RockPatch，NPatch and the still ongoing Ares project？Did EA ever bother to stop their development? They are of great importance to modders, many mods wont live without them.

@Grape_Eater

I can't remember them ever being anything but enthusiastic about mods, no matter the method.

To put things in perspective on the subject of hacking... when Apoc was community manager, he promoted my C&C95 patch through official channels, knowing fully well it was made through extensive disassembly and hacking of the game's exe file. In fact, I later got The Ultimate Collection from them for free as somewhat unofficial thanks for my patching work.

So yeah, I'd say, draw you own conclusions from that 😉