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.

It's a new year and a time to reset, reflect and think about what the next few months has in store. Here on the Age of Empires team, we've got a LOT lined up for 2024. Instead of trying to summarize it in a lengthy blog post, we decided to make a show of it! We're excited to announce the "New Year, New Age" livestream on February 23rd at 10:00 am PT (1:00 pm ET / 18:00 UTC).

With so much to come in 2024, we want to show our players around the world what to expect from the Age of Empires franchise this year. We'll be revealing more information on some of our most anticipated titles for 2024 - so expect to see a sneak peek of Age of Mythology: Retold and a first look at Age of Empires Mobile. If you're eager to know what's next for our games already in your library, don't worry, we'll have updates for those titles too.

Relic Entertainment, Inc and SEGA Europe Limited are excited to announce that Company of Heroes 3, the next instalment in the beloved RTS franchise, releases on PC via Steam on November 17th, 2022. Company of Heroes 3 will bring fans and newcomers to the series with the biggest and deepest single player experience in the franchise's history. CoH3 will offer four playable factions at launch and two unique single-player experiences, with the Italian Dynamic Campaign and the North African Operation.

Those eager to get their hands on Company of Heroes 3 won't have to wait until November to play it. Head over to CompanyOfHeroes.com now and sign up for Relic's community feedback program, COH-Development, to gain access to one mission from the newly revealed North African Operation. Players can try out the Mission Alpha and take command of the infamous Deutsches Afrikakorps (DAK) as they attempt to repel the British from their entrenched positions. The Mission Alpha is free to play on Steam for one week from Tuesday July 12 to July 19.

Relic Entertainment today announced that they were shifting focus and developing resources from developing any further content for Dawn of War III. As the third iteration in the RTS series has seen lukewarm response form critics, gamers, and the market as a whole, the company has said that "When a game underperforms, plans need to change. With Dawn of War 3, we simply don't have the foundation we need to produce major content. We're working in close partnership with Sega and Games Workshop to determine the best course of action, while shifting focus to other projects within our portfolio."

This likely means that no further updates will be delivered to the game, leaving players who were expecting to receive a new playable race in future DLC drops will remain wanting. Luckily, this means that Relic now has more resources to power onto other studio projects - one such could be the next iteration in the acclaimed Age of Empires franchise, which the company is currently working on. With Dawn of War being as expansive a universe as it is, it seems unlikely that the series will be put on ice and development of a franchise-related game won't be developed for Relic; however, that could still be an option. It remains to be seen what game,s and what projects, Relic Entertainment will choose to invest in.

I remember Age of Empires II fondly; it was my first PC game, really. The intro sequence of chess really served to put my young mind racing towards ideas of military movements and countermovements, and led me towards devouring historical romances accompanying the exploits of Alexander the Great (Valerio Massimo Manfredi's novels), and Hannibal Barca (I'm partial to Ross Leckie in this one). Now, Microsoft has announced yet another installment in this PC-exclusive series, after Age of Empires III's somewhat lukewarm reception. Age of Empires IV is coming for all of your medieval RTS needs.