Command and Conquer will no longer feature 'primarily Middle Eastern' militants, says Victory Games

Upcoming free-to-play strategy game Command and Conquer will no longer feature primarily Middle Eastern-looking militant generals, Victory Games' Tim Morten told Polygon today.

While previous installments of the series featured a militant Global Liberation Army designed with Middle Eastern facial features, the upcoming title will offer a more varied group from different ethnic backgrounds, said Morten. This change in design follows complaints the studio experienced from players who argued the use of Middle Eastern militants was "offensive," he went on to say.

"This is actually a pretty big change for the game," he said. "Anyone who knows this series will know the Global Liberation Army. But at the studio we had a bad reaction from people saying it was pretty offensive to have Middle-Eastern characters as militants."

Initially, Command and Conquer's GLA empire was said to span Kazakhstan, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, among other countries, while — according to game lore — support was mainly within the Middle East.

The new GLA will include five generals of different backgrounds. "Now we'll probably just offend everybody," he laughed.

According to Morten, the studio has also made a change to the design of workers in the game. Previously in-game workers would ask for shoes when clicked on, now in the new release they will finally get them.

Command and Conquer was first announced earlier in the year when Victory Game introduced it as a free-to-play title with no single-player campaign. The upcoming title is scheduled to release later this year but currently has no official release date.