While downloading Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine from Game Pass, something caught my eye. The developer credit: Relic Entertainment. Not Saber Interactive, the studio behind Space Marine 2. Same series, different developer. Why?
Pull on that thread, and you find the rise and fall of a legendary studio — and a cold reminder of how IP can drift from hand to hand in this industry.
The Studio Behind the First Game: Relic Entertainment
Relic Entertainment was founded in 1997 in Vancouver, Canada by Alex Garden and Luke Moloney. Starting capital: CAD $5,000. Office: a cramped space above a bar. Yet this tiny studio’s debut title, Homeworld (1999), shook the industry. A fully 3D space RTS commanding entire fleets, it swept over 100 awards in its first year, including Game of the Year from PC Gamer and IGN. Alex Garden was 23 years old.
Relic went on to cement its reputation as an RTS powerhouse. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (2004) sold over 7 million copies across the series. Company of Heroes (2006) earned a Metacritic score of 93 — widely cited as the highest-rated RTS of all time — with the series eventually surpassing 10 million copies sold.
So why couldn’t Relic make Space Marine 2?
Relic’s Turbulent 20 Years
In 2004, Garden sold Relic to THQ for approximately $10.2 million and departed. Under THQ, the studio continued the Dawn of War and Company of Heroes franchises, and in 2011 released Space Marine — shipping 1.2 million copies in its first quarter alone.
Then THQ went bankrupt in 2012. Relic was sold to Sega for $26.6 million in 2013. Here, a quiet tragedy unfolded: the Homeworld IP was not included in the deal. Homeworld was auctioned separately and acquired by Gearbox Software. The IP Relic had created from scratch was gone forever.
Under Sega, Relic released Company of Heroes 2 (2013), Dawn of War III (2017), Age of Empires IV (2021, commissioned by Microsoft), and Company of Heroes 3 (2023). But Dawn of War III and CoH3 were both critically and commercially disappointing. In 2023, Sega laid off 121 employees at Relic. In March 2024, Sega sold the studio to UK investment firm Emona Capital — and shortly after independence, another 40-plus employees were let go. The studio stated the cuts were made “with the goal of providing Relic the best possible chance to survive in an increasingly volatile industry.”
There was simply no capacity — financial or otherwise — for Relic to make Space Marine 2.
The Studio Behind the Second Game: Saber Interactive
Saber Interactive, founded in 2001, is a global development and publishing group with 13 studios across the Americas and Europe. Known for World War Z, SnowRunner, the Nintendo Switch port of The Witcher 3, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Space Marine 2 was primarily developed by Saber’s St. Petersburg studio, with Focus Entertainment handling publishing.
The result was a massive success. The game reached 2 million players in 5 days, 4.5 million in a month, and sold 6 million copies within 4 months of launch. Space Marine 3 was officially announced in March 2025.
Two Studios, Two Design Philosophies
This isn’t just a change of developer. The two studios have fundamentally different DNA.
Relic was an RTS studio at heart. Space Marine 1 was born from a team that had spent years making Dawn of War and simply wanted to experience the ground-level combat they’d been directing from above. The result was simple but weighty — a risk-reward loop built around executing enemies to restore health, four weapon slots, and a linear but densely crafted campaign. Relic’s design philosophy — “one revolutionary element, everything else refined to perfection” — runs through every moment of it.
Saber excels at large-scale multiplayer action. Space Marine 2 plays to those strengths: 3-player co-op campaign, six Operations missions, PvP modes, class systems, gear progression, and thousands of Tyranids filling the screen at once. The technical polish and visual spectacle far surpass the original. Some fans, however, argue that the clean, intuitive combat loop of the first game gets diluted under the complexity of the second.
It’s not a question of which is better. The two studios were speaking different languages from the start.
SM1 vs SM2: Systems at a Glance
| Space Marine 1 (2011) | Space Marine 2 (2024) | |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Relic Entertainment | Saber Interactive |
| Health Recovery | Executions restore health instantly | Executions + squadmate revive system |
| Weapon Slots | 4 (incl. infinite-ammo sidearm) | 3 (melee + 2 ranged) |
| Melee Combat | Simple, execution-focused | Parry / block / unblockable attacks |
| Dodge | Single button | Double-tap |
| Co-op | Exterminatus (wave defense) | Operations (6 dedicated 3-player missions) |
| PvP | 6 maps, class progression | 3 maps, class system |
| Main Enemies | Orks + Chaos | Tyranids + Chaos |
| Korean Language | ❌ Not available | ✅ Supported |
Where Is Alex Garden Now?
The man who made Homeworld — who built a legendary studio at 23 on CAD $5,000 — is no longer in the games industry.
After selling Relic to THQ, Garden went on to serve as CEO of Nexon Publishing North America, General Manager of Xbox Live at Microsoft, and President of Zynga Studios. He briefly returned to Relic as CEO in 2016, then the same year founded Zume Pizza, a robotic pizza delivery startup. Today, he runs Mnemom, an AI agent trust infrastructure startup based in San Francisco.
The man who made Homeworld is now building trust infrastructure for AI agents. A certain era of game development quietly ended somewhere along the way.
Closing Thoughts
That brief developer credit on the Game Pass download screen — Relic Entertainment — carries more history than it lets on. A studio that stunned the world with Homeworld, lost its own IP in a bankruptcy auction, passed through Sega’s hands, and ended up in the portfolio of a UK investment firm. The fact that a different studio is making Space Marine now isn’t just a business decision. It’s the outcome of one studio’s entire arc.
So if Space Marine 1 feels like it carries a certain weight that’s hard to place — it’s not your imagination.