In June we began the process of transitioning the original Dawn of War and its expansions from the GameSpy servers that hosted the games, ensuring that players continue to have access to Dawn of War’s multiplayer features after the shutdown. Moving the original game to a combination of Steamworks servers and our own Battle Servers allows us to continue to support the game.

We are committed to providing the same long term support to Dawn of War II and its expansions Chaos Rising and Retribution. Last month we began the process of moving these games to the same server systems that we are using for Dawn of War, Company of Heroes and Company of Heroes 2. We thank Dawn of War II players for their patience while we work to transition the Dawn of War servers.

The first step of this process was an Open Beta of the new Steamworks version of Dawn of War II and Chaos Rising. Today we are beginning that same process for Retribution. This Beta is open to all owners of Dawn of War II: Retribution.

To join the beta:

• Right Click Warhammer 40,00: Dawn of War II: Retribution in your Steam game Library
• Select “Properties”
• Click on the “BETAS” tab in the Properties Menu
• Select “openbeta” from the list of betas
• Download the new Beta

The Beta is a work in progress so please leave us feedback here on the Steam forums.

If you come across an issue that causes your game to crash we would appreciate if you would submit a bug report. This process is automatic and will launch after the crash. Doing so will allow us to discover potential issues more quickly.

The re-launch of the Dawn of War products comes with the introduction of the Battle Servers. This technology solves the connection and latency issues associated with peer-to-peer game play. Lagging players will no longer affect your multiplayer experience since each player connects directly to the Battle Server. This technology will allow you to experience multiplayer with a wider audience than was previously possible. As a result of the new Battle Server implementation we intend to remove LAN and peer-to-peer multiplayer.

Features removed:
• LAN / Direct Connect
• Ability to “Pause” during multiplayer.


These removed features are unfortunate side effects, but we strongly believe that continuing to support the multiplayer and online features of Dawn of War II: Retribution outweighs that loss.

We thank everyone in the Dawn of War community for their support of the game over the years, and are excited that we are going to be able to keep it running into the future.

Thank you.

- Relic Entertainment