Homeworld
Relic Entertainment was founded in Vancouver, Canada, on June 1, 1997, and began work on "Homeworld" as their first title. Relic co-founders Alex Garden and Luke Moloney served as the director and lead programmer for the game, respectively, while Erin Daly was the designer and Aaron Kambeitz the lead artist. Garden was 22 years old when he founded the company. Writer David J. Williams is credited with the original story concept, while the script itself was written by Martin Cirulis and the background lore was written by author Arinn Dembo. Cirulis and Dembo, credited jointly as "Marcus Skyler", were selected by the publisher, Sierra Studios, partway through development to expand the story concept of Relic and Williams. Sierra agreed to publish the game early in development based on, according to Garden, "two whiteboard presentations and no demo". The development of the game took over two years; the game systems were largely complete by the final eight months, which Relic spent polishing and improving the game, including adding the whole-map Sensors Manager view. The game was initially expected to be released at the end of 1998; Garden stated in a 1999 interview that the team found creating the core game itself much easier than getting it to the quality level they wanted, and that if they had known how difficult it was going to be they may have chosen not to do the project. Several ideas for the game, including ship customization, convoy routes, and different unit types for the Kushan and Taidann fleets were cut during development as they could not be done well enough for the project.
Homeworld 2
Approximately a year after the release of "Homeworld 2", in August 2004, Relic Studios was purchased by THQ for approximately $10 million USD. As THQ was considered to be a competitor of Sierra Entertainment and Vivendi Universal, the prospect of a "Homeworld" sequel remained unlikely as Sierra was still the owner of the "Homeworld" Intellectual Property (IP) until September 2007 when it was announced that THQ was in talks with Vivendi to purchase the license "Homeworld" franchise. In November 2007, THQ finally confirmed that it had acquired the license for the "Homeworld" franchise but didn't confirm a sequel maintaining that it had no comments on future games from THQ based on "Homeworld". However, Eurogamer reported in November 2008 that Relic was "definitely looking" at creating "Homeworld 3". """" lead designer Jonny Ebbert commented that "We're really happy the IP has made its way home, and yeah, we're definitely looking at it. We'll see what happens in the future,". Ebbert also commented that there was always a chance that the sequel could be in development behind closed doors. The strongest evidence indicating that "Homeworld 3" is in development came from Relic's General Manager, Tarnie Williams indicating that "three or four" titles were in development while declining to elaborate further. In 2011 Relic confirmed that they would "like to develop Homeworld 3" but they did not confirm or deny working on it. In early 2013 THQ suffered financial difficulties and liquidated their assets due to bankruptcy; Relic was sold off to SEGA. The "Homeworld" IP was not part of this sale. Despite early speculation that SEGA would attempt to rescue the IP, ultimately the "Homeworld" IP was sold to Gearbox Software. Gearbox announced that their initial plans would be to bring the existing "Homeworld" games to multiple digital sales platforms, but also created a forum on their website specifically asking for fan ideas about how the series should proceed. Blackbird Interactive, a newer developer made up of many of the designers of the original "Homeworld", later offered their support of Gearbox's purchase of the IP.