Relic is in trouble - 121 employees fired

So to sum up, teams of which work people complained the most, were banhammered. What a surprise.

Because right now its just doesnt make any logical sense, like at all, zero, why company with such amount of employees, doing everything so poorly and slow on their MAIN title, which CAN be a monopolist without any competitors in a WW2 RTS setting.

This is what I thought.
How many people do you need to keep developing COH3 and DAW at a reasonable pace?

I never would have guessed 400 people. Never.
Does not make any sense to me.

I would give a lot to see how they worked in 2022. I probably would have learned a lot about game development.

Coh3s issues are far from unfixable though.

A good interface, friends menu, player names, replay function and ranked mode should be very easy to fix and would go a long way.

The same can be said for fixing the balance. If call in units were bound to tech a lot of the current balance issues would be fixed.

The disturbing thing is that they haven't fixed those easy yet significant thigns three months into launch.

As much as I dislike employees being fired, even a small team should be able to fix the major issues fast.

Is iron harvest a good time sink? I need a backup when coh3 folds in 6 months. As lonely old gamer manning my boring shop, i go back home to play coh2 regularly. It helps to sharpen my mind and dexterity, but i see an end of an era. I am loss which time sink to switch over?

I hear Diablo4 is coming but it is too clicky and monotone IIRC

Coh3s issues are far from unfixable though.

A good interface, friends menu, player names, replay function and ranked mode should be very easy to fix and would go a long way.

The same can be said for fixing the balance. If call in units were bound to tech a lot of the current balance issues would be fixed.

The disturbing thing is that they haven't fixed those easy yet significant thigns three months into launch.

As much as I dislike employees being fired, even a small team should be able to fix the major issues fast.

Its not a problem of being fixable or not, its a leadership and priorities problem.

You can't take an RTS game and turn it into life service.
You can't prioritize monetizing the game before basic, staple QOL features even make it into the game.
You can't expect retention if you hype up console release of that unfinished game before showing people that things they ask for are actually in active development.
No one is stupid enough to believe in roadmaps to nowhere anymore.

Is iron harvest a good time sink? I need a backup when coh3 folds in 6 months. As lonely old gamer manning my boring shop, i go back home to play coh2 regularly. It helps to sharpen my mind and dexterity, but i see an end of an era. I am loss which time sink to switch over?

I hear Diablo4 is coming but it is too clicky and monotone IIRC

Campaigns are fine.
MP is dead, tho might be a bit alife right now.

Campaigns are fine.
MP is dead, tho might be a bit alife right now.

MP hasn't been Relic's focus for those 3 months, so I don't know how it can be qualified as dead unless unborn things are dead.

Campaigns is what will make the game sold on console so I can understand that the gameplay/balance teams were totally focused on making a RTS game enjoyable on console thus not working on multiplayer adjustment.

We're now close to the console release date which seems clear today to be the primary focus for SEGA, dunno why, maybe the phone version of Coh1 had good return so they wanted to do something bigger in this area.

Anyway people are passionate but quite wrong on some points, the game sold, lower than Relic expectation (or SEGA expectation), but it probably sold enough for what has been delivered: 2 solo campaigns and an eratz of multiplayer. We can all say Relic/SEGA management is stupid if we want but I don't believe they are that stupid to think the game will have good retention without retention assets developed/implemented in it (multiplayer).

They sold the game, they took the cash and they're planning to do the same with the console release. On the mean time since both games are complete by now, they're reducing their work force to adjust to their cost, maybe they're laying off more people that expected initially cuz they didn't meet their highest sell expectation, maybe not.

But just remember one thing, Coh1 Opposing front was not developed by Relic but at the same time the external studio was also including various coh1 devs who left (got layed off?) Relic after coh1 release. So the scenario we're seeing today isn't new at all.

In my opinion, June will be the cornerstone for Relic and Coh3 multiplayer, and since I like coh games, I really hope they come with good stuff next month.

You can't take an RTS game and turn it into life service.
You can't prioritize monetizing the game before basic, staple QOL features even make it into the game.

To be honest here, while most of the customisation assets probably were made already long ago (pretty much all references (names) of skins were already in game files even during last 2 tests), even if they werent new skin\customisation engine is capable of making creating skins super trivial.

For instance, in CoH1 you had baked models, meaning that if you wanted a custom model, you would either had to overlay one model on top of the other and hide some parts of it or strate up create and compile new separate model. In CoH2 its pretty much the same, but even with less customisation.

And textures had to be made from scratch.

In CoH3 on the other hand all textures for models are grayscaled and procidually generated, in other words you dont even have to fiddle with texture, just overlay pattern over it (making merit skins pretty much a 1 minute job to create, since its a basic overlay color change). And models are separated into different parts, so basically its again a 1 minute job to change pants\headgear\accessories requiring no modelling what so ever, because you can mix and match pretty much any part of the model.


What am I trying to say, that even with such advanced system (compared to other CoHs), Relic fucked up even in there, creating super mediocre and unimaginative skins. With system like that they could have been pumping out quality skins every week with very little effort required. It hardly took too much if any resources for making them or shop.

Oh yeah, and this nightfighters skins for prime. They were already done too, DAK version is coming after USF.

Well, bad news, relic laid off their coh 3 gameplay lead

MP hasn't been Relic's focus for those 3 months, so I don't know how it can be qualified as dead unless unborn things are dead.

He was talking about Iron Harvest.

Well, bad news, relic laid off their coh 3 gameplay lead

Not only was he laid off, he was banished to Russia

Not only was he laid off, he was banished to Russia

Then I'll meet him here.

You can't take an RTS game and turn it into life service.

CoH2 and 3 have all the components of the live service game. It is just that you cannot run live service without content updates.

• First month you get the new map, event where you unlock some skins
• Second month you get 2 new battlegroups
• Third month you get a small map + one map rework, second event, go make some special queue with 2x resource mod or special tank modifiers.
• Fourth you get a new map
• Fifth you get 2 more battlegroups, maybe you unlock those instantly during the third event rather than saving up coins

And you just keep going at it. Stable content rollout that keeps the game fresh.

At every month, you also add some premium skins for sale. Nothing wrong with paid skins, but the skins themselves aren't live service. It is a tip jar for when you are doing a great job with the actual live service component.

We are 3 months in and there isn't a single piece of content in THE LIVE SERVICE GAME. (skins or balance/bug fixes aren't content). COH3 only has the live service monetization, nothing more.

Campaigns are fine.
MP is dead, tho might be a bit alife right now.

No MP, no time sink because campaigns are boring for old gamer.

It seems the firings are against people whose responsibilities got flamed, from gameplay, to art, to animations, to sound, to biggest head of coh3 development Litman

I wonder who is doing the firing? Sega investigation team?

MP hasn't been Relic's focus for those 3 months, so I don't know how it can be qualified as dead unless unborn things are dead.

Read the post I'm responsing to?
The part where he ask about Iron Harvest?

Well, bad news, relic laid off their coh 3 gameplay lead

Plus Ryan McGaechan - who is almost totemic.

MP hasn't been Relic's focus for those 3 months, so I don't know how it can be qualified as dead unless unborn things are dead.

Campaigns is what will make the game sold on console so I can understand that the gameplay/balance teams were totally focused on making a RTS game enjoyable on console thus not working on multiplayer adjustment.

We're now close to the console release date which seems clear today to be the primary focus for SEGA, dunno why, maybe the phone version of Coh1 had good return so they wanted to do something bigger in this area.

Anyway people are passionate but quite wrong on some points, the game sold, lower than Relic expectation (or SEGA expectation), but it probably sold enough for what has been delivered: 2 solo campaigns and an eratz of multiplayer. We can all say Relic/SEGA management is stupid if we want but I don't believe they are that stupid to think the game will have good retention without retention assets developed/implemented in it (multiplayer).

They sold the game, they took the cash and they're planning to do the same with the console release. On the mean time since both games are complete by now, they're reducing their work force to adjust to their cost, maybe they're laying off more people that expected initially cuz they didn't meet their highest sell expectation, maybe not.

But just remember one thing, Coh1 Opposing front was not developed by Relic but at the same time the external studio was also including various coh1 devs who left (got layed off?) Relic after coh1 release. So the scenario we're seeing today isn't new at all.

In my opinion, June will be the cornerstone for Relic and Coh3 multiplayer, and since I like coh games, I really hope they come with good stuff next month.

I pretty much agree with most of what you have written, except my own take is that SEGA have slimmed down Relic prior to a sale of the asset. As you know, the DLC stuff was designed to pay for the staff needed for maintenance and patches. At some point, if not already, Relic has to work on another game(s) for which it needs staff.

My only query is an historic one: whether Opposing Fronts was outsourced. I had thought that the Lead Designer, Lead Artist and Lead engineer all left Relic shortly after COH1 was released in order to start up their own studio: Smoking Gun. Consequently, I thought it was the later Brian Wood and Quin Duffy who developed OF internally? Happy to be corrected.

SNIP

I have the impression that Artists were hit on the redundancies. I agree the art was average, which is odd, given that Relic had previously relied on Rita (B)Rush to produce skins.

Campaigns is what will make the game sold on console so I can understand that the gameplay/balance teams were totally focused on making a RTS game enjoyable on console thus not working on multiplayer adjustment.

Is this actually really a market? Console players buying an RTS to play its campaign, in 2023? Surely the number of people interested must be very very low.

Is this actually really a market? Console players buying an RTS to play its campaign, in 2023? Surely the number of people interested must be very very low.

We will see!