The Studio Behind Company of Heroes Wants to “Reimagine” Its Classic Games

Looking at the history of strategy games, there’s a handful of names that stand out as foundational — creators and studios didn’t just set the precedent, but continued to redefine it. While some of these developers have since shut down, like Age of Empires creator Ensemble Studios, others have continued to scrape by as scrappy innovators. Chief among those is Relic Entertainment, the studio behind some of the most beloved strategy games of all time, including Company of Heroes and Dawn of War. After splitting from Sega last year, Relic has now announced its new business strategy — and a big part of that could include bringing back those beloved games.

In an interview with GameDeveloper.com, Relic CEO Justin Dowdeswell said the studio intends to "explore opportunities" to bring its classic titles to modern audiences, using remasters, re-releases, or new experiences that "capture the spirit of the originals."

Relic has a long and complicated history, starting with the release of its debut game, Homeworld, in 1999. Homeworld and Homeworld 2 have gone down as some of the greatest strategy games of all time, getting remakes and a third game in 2024 made by another developer, Blackbird Interactive. In 2004 the studio was bought by THQ, where it developed Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, and more. Of course, THQ as a whole would go under years ago, leading to Relic being purchased by Sega in 2012.

Fast forward to 2024 and Sega sells Relic to itself, with the studio going fully independent. When that happened it resulted in over 40 layoffs at the studio, with a message reading “We need to streamline, focus on what we are good at, and position ourselves as best we can for the road ahead. In order to do that, we need to respond to the changing economic landscape and the challenges we’re facing in the way we develop our products and bring them to market.”

Dowdeswell says that the company is on much “better footing” than when it split from Sega, and that Relic is looking to focus on much smaller, more experimental projects that can be brought to market in 1-2 years. That’s a shift that’s happening across the video game industry, as more and more studios try and focus on smaller experiences that take less resources, and especially less time, to develop. That’s seen in everything from Dying Light: The Beast to the multiple spinoffs of the Yakuza series. But in terms of bringing back classic titles, it’s apparently a “multifactored process” that includes talks with external parties.

That’s likely because a lot of Relic’s games are licensed, namely the Dawn of War series. Interest in Warhammer has seemingly never been higher, with the franchise seeing more video games than ever and a feature film on the way starring Henry Cavill. If the rights can be worked out, a Dawn of War remake, or remakes, could be huge.

The most likely candidate for those classic titles is Company of Heroes — it’s by far Relic’s most recognizable franchise and the one that likely has the least amount of rights tied up. Company of Heroes completely redefined real-time strategy games by smartly using squad mechanics, cover for units, and destructibility. In 2023, the studio released Company of Heroes 3, which was met with mediocre reception — especially when compared to past games. Still, the brand has enough notoriety, not to mention continued interest in games set during WWII.

There’s also a handful of real-time strategy remasters that have done fairly well in the last couple of years — including Age of Mythology: Retold and Stronghold: Definitive Edition. An extra outlier with 2003’s Impossible Creatures — a bizarre strategy game that had you making horrifying, but occasionally cute, mutants that fuse multiple creatures together. It’s the kind of weirdo game that might genuinely find an audience today.

No matter what makes the cut, real-time strategy is in the midst of a bit of renaissance— so Relic should strike while the iron is hot.