Relic held the license from Games Workshop to develop the incredibly good Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War series of RTS games. That deal was alive and kicking when Relic was still owned by THQ; they were busy making Dawn of War 3 and at one point it was due for release sometime between August 2012 and February 2013. Now that THQ is dead, and Relic is owned by Sega, the Dawn of War license agreement has kind of disappeared.
When Sega acquired Relic, they also acquired IPs that Relic had worked on, namely Company of Heroes. When pressed for comment about the Dawn of War IP, Sega kept quiet and Relic’s game director Quinn Duffy maintains that he is “still a bit fuzzy on that”. Despite this apparent AWOL state that Dawn of War finds itself in, Duffy sounds adamant that Relic will be given the green light by Games Workshop once again.
“Dawn of War, because it’s a license and it’s owned by Games Workshop, they have the opportunity to work that license with whoever they want,” he told Eurogamer. “I would hope it would be us again. We had a great working relationship with Games Workshop.”
Just how likely is this? According to Duffy, “there’s a strong possibility we’ll all be working together again on Dawn of War.” A lot of that is thanks to the fact that Sega, through developer Creative Assembly, is already shacking up with Games Workshop to develop a Warhammer fantasy series of RTS games. Relic, under Sega, being reissued the Dawn of War license by Games Workshop is a no-brainer.
When Eurogamer pushed Duffy for an answer to whether they are making Dawn of War 3, he responded with a smile and said, “I won’t say.”
Source: Eurogamer