Relic has revealed that they will continue to make their video games with Sega, in spite of separating from their former publisher.
We had reported yesterday that Relic had been sold by Sega to a private investor. Technically, since Relic was not picked up by a new publisher like Microsoft or Take-Two Interactive, that now makes them an independent game studio.
Today, Relic shared a message on Twitter about their future. They said:
“We have an important announcement for our players and fans.”
With an external investor, Relic Entertainment will become an independently-run development studio. This is a huge change for us, but one thing does not change: we want to create amazing experiences for our players.
To our fans, we want to assure you we will continue to support our titles, including Company of Heroes 3 – we are looking forward to the 1.6 Update in April, loaded with new content and features requested by our community.
We want to thank Sega, whose support over the years and guidance during this transition have been instrumental to our success. We may be out of the Sega business, but we remain friends and colleagues.
We are excited about this next chapter for Relic, and we hope you will all join us in creating new experiences for our fans worldwide.”
So there it is. Sega had already laid off some people at Relic, and now they are no longer the studio’s owner, but this separating doesn’t seem to have happened with that much rancor between them.
It may be the case that Relic sees those layoffs as a result of poor business going on at Sega, and don’t see their former owner as having acted in bad faith, or having made those decisions because of incompetence.
This seems to be a positive move for Relic, as much as it was for Toys for Bob. Many fans certainly feel that all these game companies acquiring studios was creating more unnecessary risk for them.
So maybe this is where the industry should be moving forward now. If more of them went back to being independent, there would be more separation from them and their publishers, and that would also make it easier to spread out the risk instead of making it easier for people to lose jobs, people who they needed to make their games better.
Perhaps this also indicates the start of Sega’s turnaround, as they seem to be shifting more of their focus towards their revivals of classic Sega franchises in the immediate future.
