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.
Shabs Jobanputra
Originally set up (in 1999) as a joint venture with Ministry of Sound, Relentless was at first conceived as a vehicle for one-off dance singles The label’s debut release - Artful Dodger featuring Craig David’s "Re-Rewind" - sold 700,000 copies and marked the point at which the UK Garage genre moved from the underground into the pop mainstream. Subsequent hits included as Daniel Bedingfield’s "Gotta Get Thru This" and So Solid Crew’s "21 Seconds".
In the course of its subsequent evolution, first as part of EMI (from 2003 to 2009) and now Sony, Relentless broadened its musical base to launch the careers of Joss Stone and KT Tunstall among others. And in the 2009-11 period, when the label was sold to Virgin and Shabs Jobanputra became president of Virgin UK, artists he signed to the label included Emeli Sande, Professor Green, Swedish House Mafia and Deadmau5. During this three year timespan, Jobanputra also co-wrote an international top 10 hit - Jay Sean’s "Eyes on You" - with Norwegian production team Stargate, and launched a legal challenge to Coke over rights to the Relentless brand name.