Talk about community support, one of the most popular RTS franchises in Gaming gets saved from a not-so-recent Server Shutdown announcement by GameSpy which aims to stop Online Support for a number of Multiplayer Gaming titles and the savior is none other than the Game’s player community itself.

In an announcement made on May of this year, Electronic Arts stated that, together with GameSpy’s announcement, they will be ceasing online support for 50 of their game titles in hopes to allocate their time and servers into newer game titles. Part of the game list was a variety of games in the Command and Conquer franchise, one of EA’s major game titles, which would mean that the players can no longer play against or with each other in online servers and the online support such as Customer Service for issues and as well as any planned updates and patches will also discontinue.

Fans are obviously saddened by this announcement as it was through the online support that they have built communities, earned both friends and rivals and had a way to connect with other enthusiasts of the same games. But just about 2 months after the said announcement, Online Servers for Command and Conquer 3, Command and Conquer Kane’s Wrath, Red Alert 3, and even Comman and Conquer Generals: Zero Hour went back up again but this time it was not through GameSpy but throug the community’s effort itself.

Named as C&C:Online, the new and free online server caters to Command and Conquer series gamers who want to play against or with other enthusiasts online. The free service would only require a gamer to sign up for an account in order to play but no additional payment would be necessary. Still in development, players can host and join games, and use the chat lobby functions as well, although since it’s still in development stage other functions such as Ladder Rankings and Statistic Records are not yet available. A tutorial vid is also released by the server developers and it can be viewed below:

In addition, the devs has also setup a website for those who are interested to try out or continue playing C&C online, you can just head out to www.CNC-Online.net.

So for Command and Conquer fans, it’s not the end of the world just yet as you can still skirmish against each other through this new, and free, online serve, thanks to the effort of the C&C Community.