What is Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been and why was it shut down?

Developer PopCap and publisher EA have been working on the latest entry in the Plants Vs. Zombies series, Plants vs. Zombies 3: Welcome to Zomburbia, for the past four years or so. It’s been through a few soft launches and periods of unavailability, but it’s still very much in development.

However, alongside this work on the third tower defense title in the series, a group of fans have been working on a game called Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been. It was announced as being in development on May 1, 2024, but it didn’t even last the rest of the month before EA and PopCap stepped in to put a stop to it. The thing is, neither company seems to have been that harsh with the fans, yet despite this game clearly infringing the franchise’s copyright, the fan developers are crushed by their game’s cancelation.

Why was Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been shut down?

The reason that Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been was shut down is because it heavily infringes the PopCap and EA’s copyright for not only Plants vs. Zombies 3: Welcome to Zomburbia, but also the series as a whole.

The game may be a fan project, but it’s set in the universe PopCap created, uses the company’s characters, the design for the games that sparked the series, and everything else that makes up the essence of the series. On May 14, 2024, the creators of Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been received communication from PopCap and EA asking them to stop development.

The direct communication asked the project’s founder to stop development because it’s an alternative version of PopCap and EA’s game. The message, sent via Reddit, explained how PopCap is generally okay with fan projects but has to draw the line somewhere. The line, it turns out, is drawn at creating alternative versions of Plants vs. Zombies games.

The fans understood where PopCap was coming from but felt this reaction was pretty rash. At the time the message was received, only the artwork for Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been had been released publicly. However, as user chhopsky points out on Twitter, it looks a lot like someone cut out the tagline for PopCap’s game and stuck their own in its place.

In their response to PopCap, the founder of the fan project made it clear they didn’t want this game to be an “alternative” to PopCap’s. In fact, they outlined how the image they’d shared was temporary, and the game they wanted to make would use original artwork, sprites, and music and have its own storyline. Furthermore, the game wouldn’t be monetized in any way or listed in the same market space as PopCap’s original title.

PopCap’s response to this was, I think, pretty reasonable. It explained how the fan project couldn’t use any of the original characters it had created, such as PeaShooter, Sunflower, Wall-nut, Conehead Zombie, and every other face you see in the official series. There would be trouble if the fan project contained redrawn versions of these characters.

However, PopCap is very clear that if Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been contains all-new characters created specifically for its setting and story, that wouldn’t be an issue. Its response is actually pretty encouraging on that front.

The founder’s takeaway was that PopCap was singling the game out and that making original characters to fill in for those the developer had made in the first place wasn’t worth it. Considering the amount of work it would take to make meaningfully different stand-ins, I have to agree. But it’s hard to say how others would have felt about this, given that the game was meant to be the product of passionate fans who just wanted to make a game they were desperate for in the franchise.

Understandably, the founder hasn’t gone into too much detail about what the plan for Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been is moving forward. The group certainly can’t make the game now, but there is a choice to be made between continuing it in secret and distributing it quietly or, given PopCaps’ requirements, just making a full alternative to Plants vs. Zombies.

I would absolutely love to see a passionate group of fans of this series, which was one of the first to really make a splash on smartphones back in the day, make something they feel is better and serves the needs of the players. After all, as the founder points out in their thread, there’s some contradiction between what PopCap said to them about protecting the work of its artists and EA’s intention of using generative AI to replace them.

What was Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been?

Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been was a fan project created to address two major problems with Plants vs. Zombies 3 that EA and PopCap made. First, the official game seemed to be in a bit of a development hell for several years. It initially soft-launched to a set number of users before being taken down.

Then, it was restored in certain regions and taken down again. It only officially launched in 2024, but it was still a soft launch. The fan project basically aimed to be a full game for fans to enjoy, not one that would appear and disappear for even longer.

The second issue that Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been was built to fix was fans’ unaddressed expectations of gameplay. The project’s website doesn’t specify exactly what these are, but I imagine these gripes must have been present in both previous titles to warrant a group of fans getting together to fix them in a new game.

It certainly looks like the team had some huge plans for Plants vs. Zombies 3: What Could Have Been and always made it clear that it couldn’t monetize it, so it would be free for anyone who wanted it. That doesn’t change the fact that the game uses assets created by PopCap and EA.

If the project’s creators had stayed quiet about their game and distributed it to friends and fans, it might have seen the light of day. As it stands, this fan game made it to 23 days in active development and even had applications for more people to join in that time. Thankfully, no legal action appears to have been taken, so no one is losing money or suffering that much over it.