Relicnews: the definitive source for all things Relic

Users are reporting that Steam is downloading a new update, and that the Relic online servers are down.

This means that the 2.400 patch is most likely going live.

Round four of The Escapist’s March Madness begins tomorrow. Voting starts at 6am EST Tomorrow.

Relic Entertainment made March Mayhem history today by becoming the winner of March Mayhem’s first overtime match. In the process they also participated in March Mayhem’s most epic match to date. Surely it will go down in this event’s history as nothing less than a classic.The Harmonix match was nearly as impressive with a close finish.


If you thought a poll between two videogame developers couldn’t be down to the wire nail-biting fun, think again. Can these two developers, so disparate in the types of games they make yet so similar in their devotion to quality, deliver a Round 4 classic?

Harmonix makes Rock Band for those that have enjoyed it.

The next round is up!

Can Relic take on the Blizzard Juggernaut and WIN? They’ve defeated Insomniac AND Infinity Ward. Blizzard though… that’s a tough one! At the time of this post, Relic is up 55 votes to 36! Can they hold the lead? I guess we’ll find out :-)

UPDATE: After Relic holding the lead for most of the day, Blizzard’s devs have posted on their forums encouraging users to vote. Blizzard’s just pulled ahead by 24 votes in the last view minutes. Count at this time, 1231 to 1207 for Blizzard.

Seriously folks, every vote counts! But no ballot stuffing, that’s just wrong.

UPDATE Morning of 3/27: It’s neck and neck folks. 1780 for Activision Blizzard versus 1782 for Relic. Seriously, your vote counts!

Update Morning of 3/28: Polls closed at 6am Pacific time. The Escapist staff were on hand to close them and have indicated that they will be doing a dupe check. It looks like at this time, Relic has a 4 vote lead (2636 to 2632)! I suspect a lot of strategic voting went down by other studio fans from other brackets to help prevent Blizzard from moving on.

UPDATE 2 Morning of 3/28: Polled closed, and The Escapist staff dumped a bunch of duplicate accounts. It ended up in a tie! Voting is now re-opened until 3pm Eastern tomorrow! GET YOUR VOTE IN AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOSH NO DUPLICATES

UPDATE Morning of 3/29: Polls close at 3pm EST Today. Relic’s down by 30ish votes (2996 to 2965). If you’ve not voted, please take this time to help Relic win this Internet Popularity contest :-)

UPDATE Afternoon of 3/29: Polls closed, and when they did, it looked like Blizzard was up with big lead. It looks like that after the duplicates have been removed, Relic’s won! 3012 to 3026! Next up, Harmonix. Will update with a link later!

Relic's latest product, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor, has gone gold.

THQ Inc. (NASDAQ: THQI) today announced Company of Heroes®: Tales of Valor™, the next chapter in the critically-acclaimed Company of Heroes franchise, has reached the gold master stage of development and has entered manufacturing. Developed by award-winning Real-Time Strategy (RTS) developer, Relic Entertainment, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor offers three, intense single-player campaigns, three new multiplayer modes and an innovative "direct-fire" feature that offers an unprecedented amount of control on the battlefield. Scheduled for a nationwide release at all major retail and online outlets on April 9, 2009, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor will be available as a Games for Windows® PC title for a suggested retail price of $29.99.

April 9th Street date. Read more here.

Company of Heroes/Opposing Fronts is about to have a patch released.

Relic posted the notes today.

It’s a big read!

As per our last post about The Escapist’s March Mayhem feature, Relic was up against Insomniac. They’ve won that round and are now up against the Infinity Ward juggernaut.

The 5th vs 12th seed upset, one of the most consistent upsets in NCAA basketball and certainly no different for Relic Entertainment. But after scraping by in the last round, can this underdog possibly hope to win against Call of Duty juggernaut Infinity Ward? Sure Relic Entertainment makes genre defining RTS games, but is being a big fish in that niche genre’s pond enough?

It’s the battle of the acronyms as the RTS faces off against the FPS.

When I saw “Infinity Ward” I knew Relic’d be in for a tough fight. Relic at the time of this post is up 333 votes to 285… how long can they hold the lead? Can Relic pull out a win? This’ll be tough!

The Escapist has Relic going up against Insomniac in some sort of contest.

Insomniac Games re-entered the FPS marketplace with Resistance 2 in late 2008 and gave us Ratchet and Clank: Future Tools of Destruction. Will that be enough to get them over Relic and into Round 2?

Cool Fact: This developer caters exclusively to the PlayStation and developed the Ratchet & Clank series.

Relic Entertainment, an almost legendary developer in the RTS genre, is well known for their game series Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. Will the recent release of Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II be enough to get them to Round 2?

Cool Fact: Although most recently known for Company of Heroes and Dawn of War, Relic also developed Homeworld.

Insomniac better than Relic? You know what to do!

Thanks to our friends at Direct2Drive we’re very pleased to be able to give away five copies of Dawn of War 2 to members of the RelicNews community!
To be in with a chance, submit a haiku poem based on DoW / the WH40k universe in this thread.

Haikus:
first five sylables
next comes a line of seven
then finish on five

RULES
1) The contest is open to any RelicNews forum member age 18 or older who lives in a country serviced by Direct2Drive. The age requirement is set by the sponsor, and the service restriction is because it’s kind of hard to download a game from them if their service isn’t offered where you live.

2) Moderators and staff of RelicNews are not eligible. Obviously, this isn’t going to affect most of you. It should specifically be noted that Senior Members are NOT staff.

3) One entry per person. If you need to edit your entry to correct typos or make any other changes, make sure that this occurs before the deadline. Once this thread is locked, that’s it… no additional changes will be allowed.

Further Information and rules - read these!
Submission Thread

Relic’s posted an update about last night’s unexpect GFWLive outage.

There was an unexpected outage last night, our time, in the Games for Windows - LIVE service that interrupted users of our game. We are in contact with the GFWL team at Microsoft to try and determine how this can be avoided in the future or somehow minimize the impact to our users.


There was obviously some confusion in the community over what exactly the problem was. It is possible to check the status of Games for Windows - Live on this site: Network Status.

Last night I’d found the status of Xbox Live by going to this page and clicking on the status link. The two services are closely related, so those are two spots we can probably check if this appears to happen again.

Apparently something’s happened to Games for Windows Live that’s preventing people from playing multiplayer AND single player when you’re signed into an online GFWLive profile. Offline GFWLive accounts still can play single player campaigns.

Hopefully Relic will get this sorted out ASAP. Some details here.

UPDATE: Looks like it’s Microsoft.

Xbox LIVE is experiencing a temporary service interruption. We are aware of the problem and working to resolve it as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we apologize for the interruption and thank you for your patience. Please visit http://www.xbox.com/support for the latest status updates.

You can start a new Single Player campaign (no achievements) by opening the game, typing the Home key, signing out of GFWLive, hitting the home key again, and creating a new offline profile. That will allow you to start a new campaign.

UPDATE2: The Xbox Live status is back to normal, still no Dow2 game hosting though.

UPDATE3: Xbox Live status now back to reporting problems.

Users may experience difficulties attempting Machine and User Account Creation, offering purchase, and Gamertag Linking. Users may also experience issues with Matchmaking.We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for your patience.

UPDATE4: Stormsong relayed that LAN Skirmish games still work. Click Multiplayer>Custom Games>LAN Games and then host a new game. You can at least skirmish against the AI. Important that you don’t click any other game types before attempting to get into LAN games or you’ll be blocked until the connection times out.

UPDATE5: Can now start campaign missions and search for MP games. Fixed or temporary?