Relic Entertainment’s Company of Heroes 2 development team is dropping a very pleasant surprise today on fans who have been waiting for this real-time strategy game to debut. The new Theater of War mode is a cooperative single-player mode that serves as a bridge to multiplayer play.

Company of Heroes 2, which Sega picked up along with Relic from the ashes of THQ, will ship with the 1941 pack of Theater of War missions, including nine German and nine Russian missions. That’s a huge amount of additional content, considering that the single-player campaign itself has just 14 missions. I played one of the missions and found it to be a lot of fun.

While the single-player campaign follows a strict narrative — a story about the war — this new mode offers battles that illustrate other important moments between the Russians and the Germans during the first part of the war, said Simon Watts, a spokesman for Relic in an interview with GamesBeat. Big battles of 1941 are in Theater of War missions — engagements that the main games doesn’t cover.

The new missions bring about different kinds of play that you may or may not pursue in multiplayer games. For instance, in one mission, you only get two or three squads for the entire battle, and you have to keep them alive as you take a series of strong points. You can face off against different kinds of artificial intelligence, such as one that turtles up with defenses around its artillery, or another that builds only tanks so it can rush you.

“It allows the player to get used to different kinds of multiplayer strategies in solo missions,” Watts said. “With Theater of War, we have a mission pack to tell a story within the larger war. We held this as a surprise until the end.”

Some of the missions can also involve multiple players in cooperative mode, such as a battle where you have to hold a map for three days and three nights against enemy assaults. During that time, you have the benefit of a daily morning artillery strike.

In another map, you’ll have two squads of infantry along with armor to take a whole map. You have to avoid booby traps and deal with a limited number of tools to win.

I played this mission over the course of a half hour or so. In this match, I had to take a bunch of points that earned supplies for the Germans without losing all of my infantry. I had to creep into some locations to avoid ambushes. This exposed my infantry, but kept my tanks alive. And I had to make liberal use of German artillery and air power. At one point, you can take over a repair depot that fixes your tanks and keeps them alive for a longer time as the Russians launch a counterattack.

I almost made it through to the end. In fact, I did manage to take the last control point, but then I lost my last infantry unit to the Russians. It was an interesting take on the early stage of the war, where the Germans had a lot of advantages but were vulnerable at the same time.

Relic is also preparing a second Theater of War pack for those who preorder Company of Heroes 2.

“We’ll keep on expanding this cooperative mode,” Watts said.

The final game is shipping from Sega for the PC on June 25.

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I think publisher Sega is stretching the definition of “closed beta” with its most recent take on the concept for Company of Heroes 2.

Sega is opening the closed beta to anyone who likes developer Relic’s real-time strategy game, which is due out for PC on June 25. Really, gamers don’t even have to like Company of Heroes 2, they just need to click “Like” on Facebook. For a limited time, anyone who does that on the Company of Heroes page can exchange the “Like” for an invite to the closed test.

“After a successful first phase, we are delighted to be able to open the closed beta up to all of our Facebook fans and invite them to help us test and improve the game,” Relic producer Greg Wilson said in a statement.

Company of Heroes 2 is a squad-based real-time strategy title set during World War II. The trial game features competitive multiplayer across six maps. Players can face off against each other or against computer-controlled opponents.

To get your code, simply head to Company of Heroes’ Facebook page and “Like” it. Then select the “FREE Beta Download” tab next to the “Photos” tab. Follow the instructions on that screen, and then redeem your code through the Steam digital-download service.

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Company of Heroes 2 goes on sale in June, but a dedicated group of fans will likely continue playing the original 2006 release.

For those players, Sega and developer Relic are announcing that the multiplayer servers will continue to function after a migration to Valve’s Steamworks platform. Company of Heroes previously ran on a middleware server solution called Quazal. In 2010, Ubisoft purchased that company, which put Relic — then a subsidiary of THQ — in a precarious position. Finally, in 2012, Ubisoft informed Relic that it would terminate Relic.

“So we immediately started making plans about how to transition to Steamworks,” Relic producer Greg Wilson wrote on the company blog. “Unfortunately, it was quickly obvious that we didn’t have the time to focus on it ourselves, and that due to the timing of Company of Heroes 2′s server features coming online — after Quazal’s shutdown date — that a number of Company of Heroes 1 features would cease to be supported.”

Relic went out and found help in the form of Smoking Gun Interactive, a studio that former Relic staffers founded. Smoking Gun handled the server port with the goal of getting as many of the original features working as possible.

On April 8, Relic plans to offer a new version of the game with Steamworks support to customers who own the original. Players will have to make a new account. Wilson says the studio is looking into creating an online archive of the final data from Company of Heroes 1.

The developer doesn’t have a list of what is working and what isn’t, but it plans to publish that shortly.

On May 7, Ubisoft will cut off Quazal.

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Several lenders have filed an objection to THQ’s fast-track bankruptcy sale, in which it filed for bankruptcy protection and organized a quick sale to Clearlake Capital for $60.5 million.

Clearlake will buy THQ, maker of video games such as WWE wrestling titles and the action-role-playing game Darksiders II, if no other bidders appear within 30 days of the filing, which took place on Dec. 19. The objection states that THQ’s bankruptcy was orchestrated to benefit the company’s newest executives and their friends at a financial firm hired to sell THQ.

The lenders provided THQ with loans of $41 million, or 41 percent of its $100 million loan. They include Silverback Asset Management, Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund, and Wolverine Flagship Fund Trading. They own a part of THQ’s 5 percent convertible senior notes due 2014.

Clearlake said it would pay off secured claims for creditors in the amount of $29 million. It would pay $6.65 million, assume $15 million in liabilities, and offer lenders a promissory note of $10 million at a 2 percent interest rate, due in seven years. Clearlake gets a break-up fee of $1.75 million and $500,000 in expense reimbursement if the deal does not go through.

In a filing, the lenders said that the timing of the sale is too short to let interested parties make rival bids. Those potential bidders wouldn’t have enough time to kick the tires on THQ’s assets. It also says that THQ should allow bidders to offer bids for some of THQ’s game properties, rather than buying all of them. The publisher’s hot properties include sandbox game Saints Row, Darksiders, apocalyptic shooter Metro, near-future first-person shooter Homefront, and World War II real-time strategy series Company of Heroes. THQ also has rights to make games based on WWE and South Park.

The filing alleges that Clearlake would have too much control over the process. The U.S. trustee overseeing the case, Roberta DeAngelis, filed similar objections.

THQ hired its new president, Jason Rubin, and his partner, Jason Kay, in the spring of 2012. The filing says that in June or so, the two Jasons orchestrated plans to take over THQ and gain significant upside, if they executed a turnaround. They hired Centerview Partners to handle a sale of THQ or find new investors for it. The lenders who objected clearly wanted THQ to consider selling off its game properties piecemeal, but Centerview shopped the company as a whole. The lenders allege the liquidity crisis was “manufactured.”

Still, on Nov. 7, Wells Fargo sent a letter to THQ saying it was in default on its credit facility. THQ said that one of its problems was that its cash held overseas could not be brought back to the U.S. without taxation. Wells Fargo held off on proceeding with default process as long as THQ kept it informed of its finances on a weekly basis. The lenders appear to be critical of THQ’s decision to preserve its game development teams at the cost of draining reserves of cash.

THQ hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

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Company of Heroes 2 takes places during the cruel cold winters and brief springs of the war, chronicling the start of the German invasion of Russia in 1941 until the Battle of Berlin at the war’s close. You can play either side, and it offers very cool features, such as blizzards that can kill your troops and destructible environments such as cracking ice on frozen rivers.

I played a couple of rounds of the game. This was the third time I’ve seen it, and I must say I am looking forward to it. After all, it’s been six years since the original Company of Heroes came out, and we haven’t seen a really good real-time strategy game since StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty in 2010.

In the single-player campaign for Company of Heroes 2, you have to create your soldiers and send them out to take territory. Multiplayer’s gameplay is the same. But your opponents can be a lot smarter, because they’re human and therefore unpredictable. With this multiplayer version, Relic Entertainment tried to create matches that could really get your competitive juices flowing.

“We rewrote our creative vision for multiplayer,” said Quinn Duffy, the game director for Companies of Heroes 2 said in an interview with GamesBeat. “Our saying was ‘Every battle tells a story.’ These battles have their own little stories, and when we finish playing a battle, we get up and talk about the stuff that we did. It makes it feel like a more social experience. We embraced that wholeheartedly.’”

When you have two really well-matched players, Company of Heroes 2 should feel like a big struggle. As such, it is a fitting tribute to the horrible Eastern Front, where the Red Army and the Wehrmacht suffered more than 14 million military casualties. The horror of the war comes through in features such as storms that can freeze your troops, flamethrowers that send them screaming in pain, and ambushes that can take all of the morale out of your soldiers and leave them crawling on the ground. The Soviets are aggressive and have bigger squads, but they are not particularly well led. The Germans are hardcore veteran soldiers, with the advantage of having better weapons on almost every level. You can equip German infantry with antitank weapons that will stop Russian tanks cold.

In multiplayer, you can play one on one or as many as four against four. I was able to play a couple of 1-on-1 matches in the preview.

First blood in multiplayer

The multiplayer map was set during a winter campaign. As you start a multiplayer match, all you have is a team of engineers and a headquarters area. You start training soldiers, and they walk onto the battlefield as training is completed. To get more resources, you have to start taking territory.

In the first battle, I fought against fellow GamesBeat writer Kat Bailey. She was Russian, I was German. We were both equally inexperienced (after all, I hadn’t played Company of Heroes in six years). I had played the single-player version fairly recently and was able to get my production of soldiers going. I played the Germans and produced plenty of engineers, dubbed “pioneers” on the German side. I used the pioneers to upgrade my base so that I could produce half-track vehicles and large numbers of soldiers. Then I sent them out one by one to grab as many strategic spots as possible.

Those spots can earn you victory points, help you gain fuel, or get more ammo. My trick was the puff myself up as big as I could, to strike fear in Kat’s heart. As soon as we fought our first clash, I sent a bunch of soldiers into the battle from all directions. That made my army seem stronger than it was, and I was able to win the first battle. Company of Heroes 2 makes good use of the “fog of war,” where you can only see the enemies that are within the line of sight of your own troops. I took a watchtower, and that gave me extra visibility.

Duffy told me that the designers didn’t really want quick battles, but they also didn’t want maps that were so big that the first contact didn’t happen for a full five minutes. That’s just too boring.

Once we started fighting, I tried to develop a combined arms group, with machine gunners, a mortar crew, pioneers, and general infantry. I added half-tracks with machine guns, and I upgraded my pioneers to flamethrowers when I remembered that they could do that. I sent the main force into the center of the map, but I also kept the pressure on the enemy in all sections of the map. My machine gunners did a good job of stopping enemy attacks, but they didn’t last long on their own. The half-tracks, however, were pretty good at stopping infantry attacks.

What complicated the battle was the blizzard that swept through it on a couple of occasions. Company of Heroes 2 has an in-game weather mechanic made possible by Relic’s Essence Engine 3.0′s ColdTech system. You can play on the same maps in springtime weather when the terrain is green and brown or in the heart of winter when you have to deal with deep snow (which slows infantry down) or brutal subzero winds. At any given moment, a blizzard could start or stop. The snow has depth, and it can accumulate, blocking your view of what’s ahead. You can melt it and reduce it or get stuck in it. Rivers may freeze over, but they may crack under the pressure of heavy vehicles. The blizzard obstructs the vision of your soldiers. That’s bad, because you only see what your soldiers can see. And if you don’t get your soldiers to cover, they will die.

As the blizzard struck, I knew that my soldiers had to get to cover. I moved my soldiers into buildings or vehicles for warmth. But I had to send some pioneers to build fires that protected the soldiers at my headquarters. During this time, my opponent had the same problem. So combat came to a halt and surviving the weather — and building up forces — took over. I eventually took enough of the victory points on the map to put the squeeze on the enemy. At some point, Kat couldn’t send soldiers over to retake victory points that I had taken. And I eventually won.

Turning the tables

In the second battle, it was my turn to bleed. This time, I lost the first encounter and suffered setbacks. My rival was better at everything, including taking territory and building soldiers faster.

I made a mistake of signing up an artillery commander, rather than a tank commander, for my support. That slowed me down in the development of my armor capabilities, and this turned out to be a tank fight.

I tried to build up vehicles as quickly as I could, but I was constrained to building half tracks. As soon as I saw the enemy’s first Panzer tank appear, I knew I was finished. I built some anti-tank guns in response, but those were not very maneuverable, and they required a lot of infantry protection. And I was running out of soldiers.

The enemy hit me with a devastating attack by three T-34 tanks on my headquarters. Fortunately, I had an antitank gun nearby that put a stop to it. But my German infantry grenadiers had not upgraded to anti-tank weapons. Like in the real war, machine guns and rifles have no effect on an heavily armored tank.

Also, as Duffy pointed out, the bases themselves have defenses. I had a machine gun nest that stopped the enemy infantry. And machine gunners can pin down 100 soldiers as easily as they can pin done one. So it is possible to counter a surprise attack.

I rained down an artillery strike on the invader’s tanks. I had a Stuka dive bomber airstrike, but all I could really do was set the general direction of its attack. It circled around until it could find a target, but didn’t do much damage to the enemy tanks. It gives an umbrella of protection, but it doesn’t last forever. An antiaircraft tank can counter the Stuka.

I survived that assault on my headquarters, but it served its purpose of crippling my military unit production. Eventually, time ran out for me. The enemy took control of the three major strategic spots on the map and I couldn’t take them back. In the first game, everything went right for me. In the second game, played on the same map, everything went wrong.

Epic scale?

The multiplayer combat is wonderfully fun. You can find use different strategies to fight the same battle over the same ground. Does every multiplayer battle tell a story? Well, I felt compelled to tell you about mine, so I guess that’s true.

I have one nagging feeling I have about Company of Heroes 2. In some ways, the scale of the game is off. On the Eastern Front, you had huge battles. But in Company of Heroes 2, the size of each map is contained to a really small area. Tanks can’t fire at each other from a mile away. If the tanks get in a fight, it’s almost like a duel at point-blank range. That’s fine, but it’s not exactly realistic. The battle maps are about a half-kilometer square. That’s not huge, and it forces close combat.

This closeness isn’t a problem in ancient warfare games like Age of Empires, where you had hand-to-hand combat. I almost wish that there were a better way to zoom out to see a much larger battlefield, as you could with the “strategic zoom” of the Supreme Commander series of games. Still, this is where entertainment value trumps realism, and the nature of the game’s scope is fine, for a fun game.

Here’s a developer diary video from producer Greg Wilson, lead animator Brett Pascal, and lead campaign designer Jasen Torres.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Update (12:15 p.m. PST): GamesBeat contacted THQ and the publisher provided us with the following statement from THQ president Jason Rubin:

“In the midst of all the recent negativity, THQ  is mindful that even in the world of business, we have to remember to respect our fellow man. The Humble Bundle simultaneously helps charities and spreads good will and cheer to gamers, including those less fortunate in the holiday season.”

Original post:

The ladies and gentlemen over at HunbleBundle.com have dropped the Indie designation and replaced it with T, H, and Q.

The Humble THQ Bundle provides gamers with the chance to purchase six THQ titles for any price. The publisher will throw in Saints Row: The Third for anyone who beats the average, which is presently $5.36. So, if you’re a cheap skate, you can get that open-world crime game, Darksiders, Metro 2033, Red Faction: Armageddon, Company of Heroes, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, and Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor for around $6.

Saints Row: The Third alone is currently $39.99 on Steam.

The games require customers to activate each title on Steam. As usual, the money is split between the publisher, Child’s Play and the American Red Cross charities, and the Humble Bundle company. Unlike other Humble Bundles, THQ’s titles are not Mac or Linux compatible.

This is an unprecedented move for both the Humble Bundle organization and a publisher of the size of THQ. Although, THQ arguably needs something unprecedented to help prevent its insolvency.

Earlier this month, THQ reported a small financial loss, but it also delayed many of its biggest upcoming games. It also simultaneously announced that it was working with a firm to “evaluate strategic alternatives” for itself. It’s possible that it is still up for sale, as it more recently announced that it is in talks with a mystery financial sponsor, but it’s also possible that this Humble Bundle is a result of said strategic alternatives.

Many indie developers have had great success with the Humble Bundles, but it’s unclear if a publisher of THQ’s size will raise a significant revenue from a pay-what-you-want model.

Regardless of anyone’s hopes or reasons, gamers are getting a great deal. Go play.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Multinational game publisher THQ announced today that its upcoming strategy title, Company of Heroes 2, will have special technology to simulate brutal weather conditions in-game, making this the first weather tech of its kind in the genre. Set in World War II, Company of Heroes 2 will help players realize the full role the incredibly cold Soviet winter played in the Eastern Front theater in that war. The weather technology, created with the Essence Engine 3.0′s ColdTech system, includes an “extreme cold” mechanic that accurately recreates the chill of the era, which reached -40˚ F in the winter of 1941.

Players will need to keep their infantry from freezing to death by building fires and enclosed garrisons. Snow will build up and accumulate on buildings and vehicles, becoming a hazard to troops and affecting strategies. Players will need to cover their tracks in fresh snow, or melt it from vehicles to continue the campaign. Ice will also play into various scenarios, affecting troop and vehicle movement, collapsing (or being destroyed) underneath armies, and re-forming as the bitter cold continues.

“Company of Heroes 2 is all about authenticity, and no game based on the Eastern Front would be complete without extreme weather conditions,” said Quinn Duffy, Game Director at Relic Entertainment. “Thanks to the enhanced technology offered by the new Essence Engine, we are able to accurately portray the bitter Soviet winter which crippled the German army.”

The first Company of Heroes was released in 2006 and was highly rated by critics and fans alike. The upcoming sequel is scheduled for release on PC in early 2013.

THQ is based in Los Angeles County, Calif.

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The Third Street gang and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are getting a new boss.

Today THQ announced the appointment of Ron Moravek to executive vice president of production. Moravek previously worked as the chief operating officer for Company of Heroes developer Relic Entertainment. Following his departure from that company in 2006, he accepted the vice president position with Electronic Arts Canada.

“Ron is an exceptional development executive with unique perspective on the industry from both a creative and business point of view,” said THQ president Jason Rubin. “His entrepreneurial experience as well as his ability to drive dynamic teams is a great fit for our strategic objectives. Additionally, Ron’s experience building high-quality products will help us continue to deliver great games and build upon our foundation to innovate digitally in the future.”

This acquisition represents another step in THQ’s continued transition from money-hemorrhaging publisher of family-friendly products to a company more focused on core games. Since bringing on Rubin, the Saints Row: The Third publisher has reiterated time and again its dedication to a triple-A game slate going forward.

Moravek will directly oversee franchises like Saints Row, Darksiders, and Company of Heroes.

“I am thrilled to be re-joining THQ and to be working with Jason and the development team around the world to deliver high-quality games and digitally connected experiences,” said Moravek. “There are many exciting changes affecting the video game industry today, and I look forward to building new games and experiences with Jason and the team at THQ.”

THQ will release Darksiders II for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in August. The game will also release on the Wii U late this year.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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On the frozen terrain of the Eastern Front, Germany suffered more than 80 percent of its casualties in World War II. That grim fact is reflected in the brutal combat of the upcoming Company of Heroes 2, which THQ plans to publish on the PC next year.

The original Company of Heroes was one of the best real-time strategy games of 2006. I played the entire game, and it was one of my favorites of the year. It covered battles on the Western Front after the American invasion of France. But Company of Heroes 2 will cover a longer span: from 1941 until the storming of Berlin in 1945.

“For Company of Heroes 2, we wanted to be different, to do more, add more authenticity, realism, immersion, and dynamic tactical battles,” said Quinn Duffy, lead designer of the Relic Entertainment-developed game.

Duffy showed a group of journalists a scene from the Rzhev meatgrinder.The 3D art work is more detailed and more beautiful than in the first game, and the level of realism is almost as good as what you would find in a modern first-person shooter. The game uses the Essence 3.0 Engine, which improves graphics quality and accuracy of combat via a system dubbed TrueSight.

Company of Heroes 2 blends cinematic cutscenes (like the one at top) that zoom in on dialogue between soldiers and their commanders. In one battle, the Soviet soldiers retreat from a German attack, only to be gunned down on the command of a Russian officer. The cinematic blends into the real-time environment of the game, which is viewed from an overhead isometric angle.

When you pull up above the scene, you can see the snow-covered terrain and barren trees around Russian farmhouses. But if you zoom in on the soldiers, you can see that their legs vanish into the deep snow. Duffy said the depth of the snow comes into play because soldiers can’t run through deeper snow.

In one attack, the Russian soldiers crawled toward a German position and were met with a rain of artillery shells. When the two armies got close enough to exchange fire, a pitched battle began. Then the Russians brought out a flamethrower and roasted the Germans inside the farm house. That means that the cover system, while effective, is also dynamic. It changes as the battle takes its toll on the buildings.

You control groups of soldiers in small squads. The action unfolds without your direct control, but you can engage in tactical decisions such as ordering soldiers to lob grenades. If solders are flanked and in the open, they’re likely to start dropping like flies when fired upon. If they’re in protected cover or are crawling, they can probably escape German machine gun nests. Soldiers who are pinned down can be aided by teams that go around the side. And the army that brings up heavy armor first can gain a big advantage. While you won’t fight every single battle of the war on a tactical level, the game will put you at the turning points of pitched battles where the individual bravery of each soldier mattered.

THQ also said it will have competitive and cooperative multiplayer sessions, though it didn’t show any of that yet.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Company of Heroes 2 shifts focus from the American and British troops of its predecessor (and accompanying expansion pack, Opposing Fronts) and lets players take control of Russian forces.

The game takes place in 1941 and has players commanding the Red Army and defending Moscow against Germany’s push into the Soviet Union. Gameplay remains centered around applying strategic skill and tactical expertise to commanding troops just like it was in the original Company of Heroes.

“Company of Heroes 2 is a true successor, introducing a new front, new protagonists, and new technology while retaining the unique mix of strategic gameplay and competitive multiplayer that made the original Company of Heroes such a success,” said Greg Wilson, producer at Relic Entertainment, in a statement.

The original Company of Heroes was very successful, earning a 93 percent on Metacritic based on 55 reviews. The publisher, THQ, is currently going through a rocky financial period after the underwhelming performance of the company’s kid-focused uDraw tablet, having laid off 118 people in two development studios and drastically scaling back content for an upcoming Warhammer 40k game. Company of Heroes 2′s potential success could help put THQ back on track.

Company of Heroes 2 is a PC-only game slated to launch in early 2013.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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THQ said it is the process of moving its focus away from licensed kids titles and movie-based games. And it also decided to discontinue making games on its long-running MX vs ATV racing game series, resulting in the closure of two game studios in Australia and the elimination of a team in Phoenix. That shows what happens to a medium-size game company when a few of its major titles turn out to be duds.

At the same time, by not cutting back on its big effort in Facebook and mobile games, the company made a statement about its commitment to the new game industry. This fall, the company still plans to release Margaritaville Online, a Facebook game based on the classic Jimmy Buffett song. THQ said that a variety of digital gaming efforts will accompany the launches of its more traditional games as well. If you’re a game developer, it’s clear that the writing on the wall says there will be fewer jobs in console games and more in mobile and social games.

In its last earnings call, THQ said that its Red Faction Armageddon title failed to live up to expectations and that it was seeing lousy revenue from kids and movie titles. The tough thing for mid-sized companies like THQ is they really suffer when some of their bets go awry. They also know they need to invest in the fast-growing parts of the industry but have to trim back their investment in decaying game franchises.

Last month, THQ chief executive Brian Farrell said his company had to rethink its strategy about investing in traditional games and had to behave more like a startup in an age of digital disruption. He noted, for instance, that iOS games looked like a more attractive development target than the traditional Nintendo or Sony handhelds.

But before it can invest in a lot of new digital, social and mobile games, the company has to rightsize itself. THQ will now have five internal development studios that focus on particular initiatives. The company has opened a new studio in Montreal, headed by Ubisoft veteran Patrice Désilets; it also owns Volition, which developed Saints Row the Third (pictured at top) and inSANE in conjunction with film director Guillermo del Toro; Relic Entertainment, creator of Company of Heroes and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine; Vigil Games, maker of Darksiders II and Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online, which is a major massively multiplayer online game; and THQ San Diego, maker of WWE All Stars and other fighting games.

Clearly, THQ is sticking with its hit makers and is abandoning studios and franchises that are in decline. Where will all of those people get jobs? Clearly, the likes of Zynga and other social and mobile game makers are hiring. And THQ itself is hanging on to the people who can make mobile, social and digital online games as well. If it doesn’t, it won’t have much of a future.

Agoura Hills, Calif.-based THQ is announcing today that Company of Heroes Online will be released in the U.S. market as a free-to-play online game. That means players can try it out for free in online multiplayer matches. But if they want to accelerate their progress in the game, they can pay real money for virtual goods that can improve their experience in online play.

This game is a test of the market. Up until now, free-to-play games were often unbranded Asian titles that were unknown to Western gamers. But this game franchise is popular among PC gamers in the West, and it had an average review score of 93 out of 100 on Metacritic, which aggregates game review scores. It was one of the highest ranking real-time strategy games of all time.

If gamers gravitate to this title, it will show that Western gamers may embrace branded free-to-play experiences. Almost every Western publisher is trying this kind of experiment; Electronic Arts is operating its Battlefield Heroes game, while Take-Two Interactive is working on NBA 2K basketball online.

“In the past, our multiplayer experience was a quick game session that was over as soon as the match was over,” said Tim Holman, production director at Relic Entertainment, the developer that is making the game for THQ. “With this game, you get an extended experience over time.”

The new Company of Heroes Online game will be the same as the game that was released in 2006. You play either as the Americans or Germans during World War II, controlling a whole company of soldiers as they battle for control of a map. It’s played from a bird’s eye view of the action and is almost like playing with miniature toys. But the graphics are cool and the action can be quite fast, since the combat happens in real time, as each player makes moves simultaneously.

The single-player game is included for free, and the multiplayer game has been extended into a persistent online experience. That means that you can rank up as you win online multiplayer matches that involve as many as eight players.

You start by creating a commander character on either the Allied or Axis side. You can also select a class for your commander, such as hit-and-run airborne tactics or defender. For each match you win, you get points. You then get to spend those points on different features in the game that help you win matches. You can, for instance, use points to build destructive mortar teams, who can rain fire on enemies on the map or call in off-map artillery strikes. As you progress, you collect special abilities that you can choose to use in online matches to give your side an edge, such as faster speeds for your units. But players aren’t forced to buy anything in the game, as 90 percent of the items that you buy can be earned through game victories.

“The purchases you make are about making the game more convenient for players who want to level up faster,” Holman said. “It doesn’t give you an unfair advantage in a match.”

Last year, THQ teamed up with Shanda Games to create a free-to-play version of the game for China. Holman said the company started there because it is the hotbed of free-to-play. Interestingly, the game had been pirated in China, so much so that no legitimate copies were sold there. Those pirated copies had a good side effect; they served as marketing for the free-to-play online game, which requires players to log in and therefore defeats piracy attempts.

Then THQ created its own version for South Korea. That version was operated by Windysoft. Both of those games are still in operation and they have around 250,000 players. That isn’t huge, but it’s a promising start for THQ’s first major experiment in free-to-play games. The game is likely to fare better in the U.S. and European markets since the setting is the Normandy invasion. If it works out, both THQ and its Relic division have plenty of other real-time strategy game franchises that they could launch in the space. But for sure, they will probably do much better if they launch an original game as a free-to-play title. Then the bet on free-to-play would become much bigger.

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