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[IbizaPocholo]

Sega has laid off 121 employees at Company of Heroes studio Relic | VGC

The studio says restructuring will “ensure maximum focus is placed on our core franchises”…

www.videogameschronicle.com

The Vancouver, Canada-based studio specialises in real-time strategy games including the Company of Heroes, Age of Empires and Homeworld series.

In a statement, Relic said Sega and the studio “remain fully committed to supporting and investing in our titles” including Company of Heroes 3, which was released for PC in February and is coming to consoles in May.

“This comes at a time when external factors are challenging our industry more than ever, and we made this decision to restructure our organization to ensure maximum focus is placed on our core franchises,” Relic said.

“We’re confident that following this necessary restructuring, Relic will be in a position of strength to continue delivering outstanding experiences to players all over the world.

“This decision was incredibly difficult,” it added. “Relic is a studio that treasures our people and is proud of the culture we’ve grown, and right now our focus is on supporting departing employees in every way we can.

“We would like to offer our sincerest thanks to each of them for the part they’ve played in making Relic such a special studio.”

 

[diffusionx]

AOE4 seems to be doing fine but COH3 seems like bomba, wonder what was affected by this

 

[Dane]

AOE4 seems to be doing fine but COH3 seems like bomba, wonder what was affected by this

Almost sure to be COH3, Relic hasn't been a hit studio for a long time, COH2 was panned at launch by players but rebounded after updates, but DoW 3 ended being a flop to death. Age of Empires IV for all I can remember players didn't have a positive expectation because Relic was the developer, what also had a crucial role to avert that was World's Edge being co-lead developer (akin to Mistwalker and The Initiative) that had a good track with AoE 2 DE and support.

 

[SirKicksalot]

AOE4 seems to be doing fine but COH3 seems like bomba, wonder what was affected by this

Forgotten Empires made the new AOE4 civilizations.

 

[adamsapple]

Terrible. Hope all the effected land on their feet.

 

[wipeout364]

I wonder how big a layoff that is? How many people work at Relic. 120 people Seems like a lot for a studio that produces RTS games which is a pretty small market relatively speaking in 2023.

Edit: Wikipedia says 300, I don’t know if is that is pre or post layoff as the page has been updated about the layoffs, so it was either 1 in 4 or 1 in 3 either way a massive layoff.

 

[Draxon Gamer]

So all that's left is Creative Assembly.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

Next wednesday...

 

[Phase]

Next wednesday...

 

[hlm666]

Sigh, love relic but this feels like the end result of turning coh2 into a mtx shitshow. The group I play with loved coh1, played the shit out of it. CoH2 comes along and it pisses off 4 or 5 of the guys in the group (out of 8 or 9) with all the mtx and xp/progression shit so we all played it but game nights with coh2 died very quickly, possibly the least played rts for the group dawn of war 3 got played more. None one in the group bought coh3, the mind set seemed to be if we are going to be treated like free to play audience even though we bought a full price game we may aswell just play a f2p rts so beyond all reason stayed the game for rts nights.

 

[bender]

Not an RTS guy, but I still remember Shawn Elliott and the GFW Radio crew speaking glowingly about COH. I wish my components were smart enough to allow me to enjoy this genre.