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Sega sells off Relic Entertainment, will axe 240 jobs

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/sega-sells-off-relic-entertainment-will-axe-240-jobs

Relic will become an independent game studio, while Sega's remaining studios across Europe will lay off workers.

Canada-based studio Relic Entertainment, which recently released Company of Heroes 3, did receive some good news in the midst of these layoffs. The company announced on X (formerly Twitter) that it is becoming an independent studio thanks to the help of "an external investor" who went unnamed.

17 comments

Carighan

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jobs will be cut at Creative Assembly

Ha! Can't cut down on the QA and testing stuff if there is none! Smart thinking, CA!

Damn this sucks though. Happy for Relic that they escaped it, but Sega has been dropping the ball so hard lately, it sucks they take it out on their workers.

caut_R

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I feel like I haven‘t heard or read anything positive about CA since they did Shogun 2

ampersandrew

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Did you miss Alien: Isolation, Three Kingdoms, and Warhammer?

ICastFist

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You mean the near Paradox levels of DLC for Three Kingdoms and Warhammer? And selling blood as a fucking DLC for every Total War game since Shogun 2? Yeah, I've heard about it.

The games are good, but Sega's forced monetization is atrocious.

UndercoverUlrikHD

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Eh, CA pretty much aced their DLC strategy for warhammer 2. It's with Warhammer 3 that they fell of a cliff. And three kingdoms barely got any DLC before getting cancelled.

ampersandrew

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Of those three, the one I bought was Three Kingdoms, and I was certainly not forced to buy more than the base game. Paradox's DLC strategy is a-okay by me. Neither company puts a gun to my head to buy their DLC. Pretty sure blood is a DLC to get away with a lower age rating.

Gork

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One thing I didn't like about Shogun 2 and all subsequent sequels was enforcing a limited number of armies by forcing a general to be present. The maximum number of armies you could field is naturally bottlenecked by your economy, so you should have the flexibility to use some non-generaled armies to bolster garrisons in key strategic locations. Instead, you need to use one of your scarce generals to defend it, which prevents them from being used offensively so they just sit around.

BudgieMania

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damn, I knew that Sega had had a few big blunders lately, but having to straight up sell Relic is pretty huge... Wonder how their output will look from now on, it's no secret that some of their output under Sega was questionable (primarily Dawn of War 3) and one has to wonder how much of their failings were due to Sega's directive.

poke

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I wonder which side, Sega or Relic, is to blame for the awful monetization of company of heroes 2 and 3?

ICastFist

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If you look at other games published by Sega, like Yakuza Like a Dragon, Persona 3 Reload, Two Point Hospital, Total War games, it becomes clear Sega's the one responsible for that

caut_R

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How independent is Relic really if they got bought by an unnamed external investor? Still better than getting axed and hoping the same kinda layoffs won‘t just come later („The studio hasn't indicated if it will lay off any workers as part of the shift“).

ampersandrew

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The investor has a stake in the company, so they share in the successes and take on the risk of failure, but they provide capital to make this purchase from the parent company in the first place.

altima_neo

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I mean that's how most independent studios work. There's always someone with money investing into the studio, be it an external investor or sometime at the studio.

sirico

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Why would Larian do this? I am all for the return on scaled back indie studios, especially ones with strong identities like Relic

Stovetop

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What does Larian have to do with any of this?

altima_neo

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And what's Ja think of all this?

sirico

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It was a play on the Eric Andre meme, following Swen Vincke's comments recently and his speech at the game awards "We don't have shareholders, but we also don't think about them,". Which maybe got through to a few studios that have the ability to take back their independence, especially those under the likes of Embracer, who are currently haemorrhaging money.