For one, Sega is encouraging synergy between Relic and Total War: Rome II developer Creative Assembly, stating both developers can “share knowledge” and pool resources. To that end, Creative Assembly’s studio director Tim Heaton has been named interim general manager of Relic while a new one is being hired.
According to Heaton, while a permanent GM is being sough, his ”role in this phase is to keep the studio focused on delivering COH2, to find the necessary staff to take Relic into the future and to ease the transition.”
The studio director sees a lot in common between Relic and Creative Assembly.
”Sega bought Relic because they could see the staffs’ depth of ability and knowledge in the PC strategy space. The studio has had a tough time in the past few years with a publisher struggling to support them, but it’s a testament to the way Relic works that it has had great staff retention, and that it has focused on making Company of Heroes 2 a great game,” he noted.
”To be honest we could see many similarities with Creative Assembly - they’re pragmatic, deeply experienced and retain focus on the important things.”
As similar as Relic and Creative Assembly are to each other, there is zero chance the two studios will merge. Even so, according to Heaton, “although there are no plans to tie the two studios together, we’re already seeing knowledge feed back from Relic into CA.”
