At the E3 show in 1998, Computer Gaming World named a space strategy game from “an unknown start-up company” its Game of the Show. The game was Homeworld, the company was Relic Entertainment of Vancouver, and it had not yet released anything. Its founder, Alex Garden, had wanted a strategy game that would recreate a Star Wars-style space battle, “with fighters and cruisers swarming within a massive sphere of lasers, explosions, and ships”, and every ship, nebula and asteroid in it was drawn in real-time 3D.
Relic has made real-time strategy games ever since, through four owners: itself, THQ, Sega and, from 2024, itself again. In 2013 Edge summed up the career: “Ever since Homeworld revolutionised the realtime strategy genre in 1999, Relic has toiled within this doggedly unfashionable field.”
Fast facts
- Founded: 1997, in Vancouver, British Columbia, by Alex Garden and colleagues.
- Owners: independent; THQ from 2004; Sega from 2013; independent again from 2024.
- Best known for: Homeworld (1999), Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (2004) and Company of Heroes (2006).
Alex Garden’s start-up
Garden had come up through Vancouver’s games industry. PC Zone‘s 1999 profile traced the route: a games tester at Distinctive Software, quality assurance at Intersoft, medical imaging software at Vision Engineering in Winnipeg, PlayStation programming at Radical Entertainment on The Divide: Enemy Within, and co-lead programmer on Electronic Arts’ Triple Play Baseball ’98. Then “Relic Entertainment is born, comprised mainly of EA refugees (they still have the EA nameplates on their doors) and friends Garden has built up over the years.”
Homeworld came out of Garden’s love of Battlestar Galactica: a nomadic people, carried in a vast mothership, searching for the planet they came from. The idea did not come together, he said, until he heard a piece of music on his clock radio one morning: “I suddenly sat bolt upright and went, ‘Oh my god!’ It all crystallised. I knew then what the universe would look like.”
Homeworld
Sierra published Homeworld in 1999, some months later than planned. It played like other real-time strategy games of the time – harvest resources, build ships, out-produce the enemy – but in three dimensions, with a camera that could fly anywhere. “Whenever you focus your view on two or more ships, the camera will always make sure it keeps them all on screen,” Garden explained. Computer Gaming World called its campaign “persistent and unconventional”: the whole game was one journey home, with the fleet making hyperspace jumps between missions.
Edge gave it eight out of ten. It found the campaigns tightly scripted and the AI “a game sparring partner if hardly an imaginative opponent”, and in big battles the engine dropped so many frames that “you can no longer influence events”. It was “too complex to have the mass appeal of Tiberian Sun”, but “enormously enjoyable, prods realtime strategy in a new direction, and really ought to be played if only for the battles alone.” See real-time strategy.
Homeworld 2 followed in 2003. Shortly before it, on 26 September 2003, Relic published the original game’s source code for non-commercial use, free to anyone who joined its developer network. The game’s art and video stayed under copyright, so players still needed the CD, but fans set to work porting it to Linux.
Creatures, Space Marines and the Second World War
Relic did not stay in space. Impossible Creatures (2003), published by Microsoft, let players build their own units by crossing two animals: a skunk and a chameleon, say, or a lobster and a gorilla. Relic built a developer network around it, with tools, tutorials and forums, because, as its chief operating officer Ron Moravek told Edge, PC games were becoming “almost entertainment operating systems rather than standalone products”.
In 2004 THQ bought the studio, and in the same year Relic released Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, set in Games Workshop’s tabletop universe. Maximum PC greeted it as “a real-time strategy game that doesn’t feel like a real-time strategy game”. Two years later Edge reported that Dawn of War had “quietly” become “the number one choice of the online RTS community”. Its successor in that role was Company of Heroes (2006), a Second World War game in which, Edge wrote, infantry “advance using cover, hiding behind walls and dashing into ditches”, tanks knock down buildings, and players fight over control points that supply fuel, munitions and manpower. “Company Of Heroes is that game, squared.”
Sega, and independence
THQ went bankrupt at the end of 2012, and its studios were auctioned in January 2013. Sega bought Relic for $26.6 million. Under Sega, Relic made Company of Heroes 2 (2013) and Dawn of War III (2017), and worked with Microsoft on Age of Empires IV (2021). Company of Heroes 3 followed in 2023.
In March 2024 Sega announced that it would sell Relic to an investment firm as part of cuts at Sega Europe. The sale was completed in April, and Relic, independent again, cut more jobs. Its chief executive, Justin Dowdeswell, said the studio would keep making large strategy games alongside smaller ones, and return to its older series with remasters and remakes.
Released source code
- Homeworld (1999): source code released by Relic on 26 September 2003, through the Relic Developers Network, for non-commercial use; the game’s data and videos were not included. Reported by LinuxFr.org, 2003.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 170, September 1998, p. 66: Homeworld preview (Game of the Show at E3; “an unknown start-up company”; Garden’s aim; Sierra Studios).
- PC Zone issue 73, February 1999, pp. 42–43: Homeworld preview and profile of Alex Garden (his career; “EA refugees”; Battlestar Galactica and the clock radio; the camera).
- Edge issue 77, Autumn 1999, p. 75: review of Homeworld (Sierra, £40, eight out of ten).
- PC Player (Germany), May 2001, p. 51: preview of Impossible Creatures (Relic and Microsoft; animal combinations).
- Edge issue 120, February 2003, p. 16: the Relic Developers’ Network and Impossible Creatures; Ron Moravek.
- Maximum PC, December 2004, p. 63: review of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.
- Edge issue 167, October 2006, p. 31: preview of Company of Heroes (THQ; Dawn of War’s online following; cover, control points and tanks).
- Edge issue 250, February 2013, p. 66: Relic, founded 1997; “Ever since Homeworld revolutionised the realtime strategy genre in 1999”.
- Edge issue 254, June 2013, p. 125: “Relic’s 2004 acquisition by THQ”.
- Wireframe issue 40, June 2020, pp. 40–41: Homeworld “sold well in 1999”; Homeworld 2 in 2003.
- Computerworld, “Sega acquires game developer Relic from THQ auction”, 25 January 2013 (web, secondary): the $26.6 million price; founded 1997; THQ in 2004. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2715573/sega-acquires-game-developer-relic-from-thq-auction.html
- LinuxFr.org, “Relic Entertainment ouvre le code source de Homeworld”, 2003 (web, secondary): the source release of 26 September 2003 and its conditions. https://linuxfr.org/news/relic-entertainment-ouvre-le-code-source-de-homeworld
- Hitmarker, “Company of Heroes studio Relic outlines future plans following split from Sega”, 2024 (web, secondary): the sale announced in March and completed in April 2024; further job cuts; Justin Dowdeswell on the studio’s plans. https://hitmarker.net/news/company-of-heroes-studio-relic-outlines-future-plans-following-split-from-sega-2911519
- “Relic Entertainment”, Sega Retro (web, secondary): Company of Heroes 2 (2013), Dawn of War III (2017), Age of Empires IV (2021), Company of Heroes 3 (2023). https://segaretro.org/Relic_Entertainment