Plants vs. Zombies Creator Reportedly Fired by EA for Objecting to Pay-to-Win

The original creator of Plants vs. Zombies, George Fan, was reportedly let go by publisher EA several years ago after objecting to the pay-to-win model that was subsequently introduced into the series.

Sean Murray does not like talking to the press. He says this several times when we meet at the Guildford offices of Hello Games, the development studio he founded in 2008 with Grant Duncan, Ryan Doyle and David Ream. He is loquacious, but nervous. No one at the studio has spoken to any journalists for nearly two years, since the release of Murray’s pet project No Man’s Sky, an extraordinarily ambitious space exploration game that aimed to put an infinite universe on a games console – a game that, when it didn’t meet some players’ high expectations, triggered an appalling internet harassment campaign that left the small studio and its staff reeling.

It is hard to blame him for his hesitance. Talking to the press is partly what led to Murray’s ordeal in the first place. As the visible creative lead of No Man’s Sky, the person who talked up the science-fiction game and its enormous ambitions in interviews before it was released, he bore much of the ire when features promised during development were not present when the game came out. One poster on Reddit drew up a list of everything Murray had said in interviews about No Man’s Sky, cross-referenced with what was actually in the game. It was not flattering.

The press didn’t attack Hello Games when No Man’s Sky turned out to be a different game than the one some players had expected. Most reviews noted its emptiness, but critics also praised its lonely mood, Asimovian aesthetic, and the astounding technical feat of generating an entire universe of planets and systems complete with procedural flora and fauna. But unwittingly, the press gave the attackers ammunition. After a couple of weeks, disappointed players moved on, and the angry ones were all that were left.

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Instead of giving up and disappearing off the map, Murray and the studio decided to double down on No Man’s Sky, keep working on it, and concentrate on what the people who were actually playing it wanted, rather than the people who were furious about it. “We did something that I think I’ve always done, when I look back at my life,” says Murray. “When I’ve dealt with shitty situations when I was kid, moving between lots of schools, or when I’ve had shitty bosses later in life … I basically just get my head down, and I work, and I avoid. I just focus on making games, making cool creative things, and that’s an outlet for me. I think the team just wanted to do that.”


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Multiplayer is one of the features fans have been waiting for. “A very light multiplayer was envisioned for launch, and we fought right up until the end to add it, but it was immensely challenging and we knew it was something that only a handful of people would experience due to the size of the universe,” Murray explains. “We later added a version of it for the Atlas Rises update, and it was nice, but not hugely impactful to people’s enjoyment. What players really wanted was the kind of multiplayer we are adding now.”

I remember thinking: 'Maybe when you’re sending a death threat about butterflies in a game, you might be the bad guy'

The update, called No Man Sky NEXT, doesn’t betray the spirit of the game. It is still meditative and calm, and hazards come in the form of toxic rain or freezing planetary conditions rather than hostile aliens or other players. There is nothing to shoot, nothing to conquer. You are still a tiny speck in an infinite universe – it’s just that now, you have some company. It is possible for players to attack each other or dogfight in space, but the game is designed for cooperation. Murray describes it as a “Star Trek away team vibe”.

Blizzcon in the coming week. Just give me my Diablo 2 remaster so I can relive part of my youth.

EA get the band back together for Command & Conquer and Red Alert remasters

EA have now officially announced their Command & Conquer remasters, and they look to be in good hands. Several of the strategy classics’s original developers are returning, including talent from ex-Westwood folks Petroglyph and original composer Frank Klepacki. Together, they’re polishing up the original Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, along with its alt-history cousin C&C: Red Alert, plus all expansions for both games. Preempting the cynics amongst us, EA have also confirmed that there’ll be no micro-transactions. The devs announce the news below.

EA producer Jim Vessella made the full announcement on the Command & Conquer Reddit page, where he’d previously teased it in October. Calling it “the first offering”, the first two C&C games plus all expansions released as “one remastered collection”. Right now, nothing is set in stone, and both EA and Petroglyph are reaching out to players for feedback on what they feel needs to be retained or improved. They’ve explicitly stated that that this would be a “remaster” instead of a “remake”, but they do admit that the terms are fuzzy around the edges at the best of times.

Dear EA,

I will cut you if you fuck this up.

Yeah. This is a rare and shocking bad move from Blizzard.