Former Westwood Studios employee and current EA Enterprise president Laura Miele has revealed that the reception to Command & Conquer Rivals’ announcement was a lesson she took into how EA approached new entries, remakes, and remasters in its longstanding franchises.
Miele, speaking at The Game Business Live earlier this month, discussed her history with EA, coming up through the ranks, explained how EA approached Battlefield 6, and, of course, made positive comments about AI in development. This does put a bit of irony into a story she told regarding the 2018 announcement of Command & Conquer Rivals, and how the company learned important lessons from the backlash.
If you don’t quite recall, in 2018, EA brought the RTS series Command & Conquer back in from the cold after a six-year hiatus. Great, right? Well, the game it chose to do this with was a mobile-only entry called Command & Conquer Rivals, and let’s just say longtime C&C fans were ‘unhappy’ about it.
Miele recalls the situation during the interview, saying that a team within EA had come forward with an idea for ‘’this really cool competitive Command & Conquer mobile game.”
“It was called Command & Conquer Rivals’’, Milee continued, ‘’ I thought, ‘Oh gosh, what a great way to bring Command & Conquer to even more people. Given the reach of this platform. This is going to be really great.’ I was pretty excited about it.’’
Miele then goes on to talk about the backlash, stating that long-term fans felt EA was ‘’ taking Command & Conquer, you’re putting it to mobile, and you’re not remastering, or taking care of something.”
A Change in Strategy
This proved to be what Miele called ‘’ a valuable moment’’ which led her to take action that led to the remastering of Command & Conquer by former C&C developers at Petroglyph Games.
The takeaway from this experience for Miele was that fans of these beloved long-term franchises ‘’ have ownership over this. Players walk through our worlds and live our stories, and they become our characters. It’s so personal, and no other medium on the planet has that.”
At that same E3 where the ill-fated C&C Rivals emerged and while Miele was still fresh in the job of running studios for EA, she’d concocted a plan to find out what players wanted from EA by inviting creators and influencers. From that particular set of chinwagging, she heard their requests for the return of Skate, Dead Space, and EA Sports College Football, and greenlit new games for each.
But it’s in more recent times where the impact of that C&C Rivals debacle can be felt most. Miele cites the development of Battlefield 6 as a key example of giving fans what they want, alongside what EA felt would be successful business-wise, but crucially, giving the fans what they want first.
‘’ This is why when Battlefield 6 launched, it was primarily the core Battlefield experience that fans know,’’ Miele said. ‘’ And the free-to-play battle royale spin-off Battlefield REDSEC arrived later.’’
But it wasn’t just Battlefield influenced by that C&C Rivals lesson; the free-to-play modern Skate game also benefited.
“We had to make sure we delivered the core Skate mechanic, the cool tricks and the authenticity of being on the board,” Miele said.“That culture is so important. We couldn’t stray from it, or we wouldn’t have permission to do something more expansive or broader. We had to nail that, and then we were allowed, in partnership with our players, to expand beyond that.”
In the case of Battlefield, it certainly worked, as the game did great numbers in a relative sense, becoming one of the best-selling games of 2025. But EA’s own ideas of what great numbers are, some would say, unrealistic, and despite the record success for the series, it still instilled disappointment for EA.
It is amusing that a hardcore fanbase of a beloved RTS series helped change EA’s attitude to its franchises, but given an imminent takeover, reported layoffs, and a push for AI, it does feel like something of an anomaly in the epilogue of EA as we know it.
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