Today, SEGA has announced it is selling Relic Entertainment as part of a series of structural reforms mainly taking place in the European region.
The Vancouver-based studio known mostly for strategy games like Homeworld, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, and Age of Empires IV has been sold for an undisclosed sum to an external investor called Emona Capital LLP. However, Relic itself told its many fans that it will now function as an independently run studio, just like it was for the first seven years of its existence before THQ and SEGA. Relic also reassured Company of Heroes 3 players that the game will continue to be supported, starting with update 1.6 which was just detailed on the official website and will ship next month.
As mentioned in the headline, SEGA is also cutting around 240 jobs at Creative Assembly, SEGA Europe, and Hardlight. The latter studio is known mostly for being the lead developer for the 3D platform game Sonic Dream Team, released in December on Apple Arcade.
As for Creative Assembly, it’s not their first round of layoffs. In September, SEGA canceled their Hyenas sci-fi first-person shooter game, causing an unknown amount of job losses at the UK based studio. However, in a statement released to IGN, the publisher reassured Creative Assembly is still working on multiple projects for Total War and beyond:
Creative Assembly continues to have multiple projects in development with Total War and a new unannounced project.
With this latest round of layoffs, 2024 is closer than ever to registering a new record in that regard, and it’s not even April yet. Meanwhile, even one of the biggest companies on Earth (Microsoft) is looking to make some very big shifts to its business to make it more profitable in the long run.
