Veteran real-time strategy studio Relic Entertainment, the developer of games like Company of Heroes 3 and Dawn of War 2, has been sold as part of Sega Europe’s “restructuring” and is now independent. Sega Europe also announced that it was laying off 240 workers across its other studios as part of the cost-cutting plan.
For its part, Relic Entertainment says it plans to continue supporting its RTS games, the most recent of which is Company of Heroes 3. Players can actually expect the next title update sooner than previously planned: patch 1.6.0, Coral Viper, will now launch April 2, three weeks ahead of its original April 23 deployment date.
“We want to thank Sega, whose support over the years and guidance during this transition have been instrumental to our success,” Relic said in an official statement posted to X. “We may be out of the Sega business, but we remain friends and colleagues.”
On Steam, the company added: “We began as an independent studio almost 27 years ago, and we’re excited to have the opportunity to come full circle and take charge of our future.”
As Polygon reports, Sega’s shares in Relic have been transferred to a new holding company established by Emona Capital, a London-based investment firm. Last year, Sega canceled Creative Assembly’s FPS game Hyenas, and cut another 250 jobs at that time.
Patch 1.6.0 adds two new battlegroups: the Australian Defense battlegroup for the British Forces and the Battlefield Espionage Group for the Deutsche Afrikakorps. It also includes three new community maps, difficulty selection for co-op versus AI mode, a vote to surrender option, a cooldown for automatch, a mission select feature, and more. The full patch notes can be found on Steam.
You can check out our Company of Heroes 3 missions list or have a look at our Company of Heroes 3 beginner tips and tricks if you’re just getting acquainted with the WW2 strategy game.
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