Sperasoft partners with Relic - Announcement

https://community.companyofheroes.com/discussion/243407/coh2-the-road-ahead
New Content (UGC)
Although we plan to continue releasing new in-game content in future updates, we will now be leveraging UGC such as vehicle skins and maps to help offer new gameplay experiences to the community. We hope that advances to COH2’s modding tools will also take place in the coming months, allowing additional forms of content to be created by the community as well - however this is still to be confirmed.

https://sperasoft.com/news/2019/11/sperasoft-partners-relic-entertainment/
November 26, 2019
USA, San-Jose – November 26, 2019 – Sperasoft, a Keywords studio announces its partnership with Relic Entertainment, an innovator in the real-time strategy genre.

Relic Entertainment is a Canadian video game developer based in Vancouver. For over 20 years they have specialized in award-winning real-time strategy games, and are known around the world for franchises such as Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and the upcoming Age of Empires IV. When working on these games, Relic uses its proprietary Essence Engine, developed in-house. The Essence Engine utilizes the Havok middleware physics engine and enables many next-generation features to help push their titles forward. Relic’s desire to innovate in the real-time strategy genre has led to numerous awards and accolades, and they’re bringing that same innovation to their next title, Age of Empires IV.

Being part of SEGA, Relic Entertainment strives to create rich, thoughtful strategy games that people love to play. Working in cooperation for over a year, Sperasoft provides art services for Relic and is regarded as a trustworthy and flexible partner.

Sperasoft is an old hand at game development, showing the studio’s true colors in its work with partners and clients, providing all the necessary resources and completing tasks of any complexity on time. Such a foundation allows us to build long-term relationships with our co-development partners.

“Sperasoft is a big fan of Relic Entertainments games and the RTS genre as a whole” – comments Denis Larkin, Chief Commercial Officer at Sperasoft – “it has allowed us to quickly find a rapport and hopefully, successfully gratify RTS fans everywhere”.

“Relic is excited to work with a trusted partner who shares our values of meaningful collaboration, transparency, creative problem solving, and learning from the experts around us.” – Heidi Eaves, Chief Operating Officer at Relic

About Sperasoft
Sperasoft is a leading game development company headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley with development centers in the USA, Poland and Russia. We offer full development capabilities with comprehensive professional teams that are built upon the best producers, engineers, game designers and artists in the industry. During 15 years of existence, Sperasoft studio has not only grown to 500 people and has opened 5 offices around the world, but also moved to a new level of cooperation with customers – becoming a co-developer of the world’s most famous publishers.

For more information, please refer marketing@sperasoft.com
*SNIP*

Relic External Development Teams & d3t Modding Tools

Re-posting info from my reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/comments/a02dbl/relic_working_with_keywords_studios/
Update;
Keywords Studios: “We are going to keep acquiring new companies”
The video games outsourcing giant on expanding its services, fixing crunch and how it will avoid competing with its clients (November 2018)
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-11-22-keywords-studios-we-are-going-to-keep-acquiring-new-companies

To help ramp up content production in art and engineering/programming Relic is working with two studios now owned by Keywords international.
https://www.keywordsstudios.com

Keywords international are a growing services provider to the global video games industry.
Microsoft Studios and Relic/Sega are involved with this.

1) Sperasoft Studios
Client source:
https://sperasoft.com/about/ (see Relic in the client list)
A big international studio.

2) d3t Studio
A growing UK studio run by former THQ.
One of the operation directors is the former Relic senior programmer, Noel Austin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/noel-austin-4b603912/
Client source:
https://d3tltd.com/projects/company-of-heroes/
Quote d3t: “We really enjoyed developing the Steam Workshop support for the classic Sega title"
The d3t 10 YEARS MODDING UPDATE:
Company of Heroes.”COMPANY OF HEROES GETS A MASSIVE MODDING UPDATE 10 YEARS ON (June 1, 2017):
https://www.gamespace.com/all-articles/news/company-of-heroes-modding-update/

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The founder of Sperasoft and co-founder of d3t (Jamie Campbell) were recently promoted to key leadership positions within Keywords international.
Keywords Studios announces Senior Management Team changes (07/10/2018):
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/321687/Keywords_Studios_announces_Senior_Management_Team_changes.php
Both of these two studios was recently acquired by Keywords international:

Keywords buy d3t for £3 million (October 2017):
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-10-19-keywords-buys-d3t-for-3-million
Keywords buy Sperasoft for $27 million (December 2017):
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-12-13-keywords-buys-sperasoft-for-USD27-million

Keywords International are connected to Vancouver based XDSummit which Relic/The Coalition has been involved with for years.
Microsoft currently has 3 people on the XDS advisory committee:
http://xdsummit.com/about/advisory-committee/

Below is Relic's XDS presentation in 2014 by Dilber Mann. XDS committee member 2014-2018.
Relic Development Director, External.

Linkedin Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dilber-mann-7364212/
Dilber Mann's Blog:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DilberMann/994704/
A similar Microsoft director position as Dilber Mann, also XDS member:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samcarlisle/

Why did Dilber Mann leave Relic to join The Coalition studio in 2017? (Microsoft's Vancouver studio)

The d3t/THQ Team working on Relic games?:
Richard Badger Studio Head at d3t
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricbadger
Steve Powell Co-Founder and Director at d3t Ltd
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-powell-b748829/
Jamie Campbell Engineering Service Line Director at Keywords Studios
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-campbell-0390b02/
Andrew Booth Studio Technical Director at d3t Ltd
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-booth-76681814/
Matthew Green Head of Art at d3t Ltd
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-green-75b71113/
Noel Austin, Operation Director (former Relic):
https://www.linkedin.com/in/noel-austin-4b603912/
Kenneth Jensen Localization Project Manager at Keywords Studios (former QA Lead on Company of Heroes 2)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-jensen-mtl/

Jump back to quoted post28 Nov 2019, 06:48 AMCrecer13

If Modding tools really come to CoH2, this is really big and important news.