World War 2 has been postponed. Company of Heroes 3, the next entry in Relic’s totemic RTS series, has been hit by a delay with barely a month to go until its original release date. Instead of releasing on November 17, Company of Heroes 3 will come out on February 23, 2023, around four months from now.
Relic is being pretty forthright about the reasons for the delay: the game just isn’t up to snuff yet. In the extra few months’ development time, the dev team will be focused entirely on fixing bugs, tweaking mechanics, and polishing up what’s already there. “Over the next 4 months we will not be adding any new features,” the delay announcement reads, “Now it’s just a matter of tuning and polishing everything to deliver on that core experience”.
The devs have repeatedly emphasised the extent to which fans have shaped Company of Heroes 3’s development, and Relic is framing the delay the same way. The announcement features a list of tweaks, fixes and improvements that the devs have already made on the basis of fan feedback, and promises that the back-and-forth will continue with “week-to-week” updates in the time between now and February 23.
Fans are being encouraged to involve themselves in the game’s development on the Company of Heroes forums and Discord, though there probably isn’t time for another player-invented faction in the next four months. Hey, maybe in Company of Heroes 4.
We’ve already had some hands-on time with Company of Heroes 3, and we enjoyed what we saw. PCG strategy connoisseur Fraser Brown had a whale of a time with the bloody mayhem of its multiplayer pre-alpha, at least when he wasn’t composing odes to the game’s tanks. It’s a shame, then, that we’re going to have to wait an extra few months to see Company of Heroes 3 in its full glory, but even a long delay is better than it being rushed out half-baked.