ꦰA persistent, online-only version of Relic's show-stopper PC RTS Company of Heroes is in the pipeline - but it'll🎃 be exclusive to China.

Reported on, the de🍸veloper and THQ plan to tackle rampant PC piracy in the country by making the WWII game online-only.

This means that Chines🐻e players will be able to, essentially, level-up a character and climb through military rank via PvP and multiplayer co-op in new gameplay modes. Presumably, then, players band up to form units.

"...there is no PC retail market here due to rampant piracy - everything you buy is a pirated version. So you have to make your game online-only and modify the design to be culturally viable in the market," Tim Holman, Company of Heroes Online producer, explained about the imitati🦹ve to break the series into the Chinese market.

"The whol🦩e industry wants to court the country (official population: 1.3 billion, with some estimates putting it as high as 1.7 billion), it's just that [we] don't know how. Publishers will localize a game, toss it over the fence, and then scratch their he🍷ads as to why it's not selling," Holman said.

"Ther🔜e is a big difference between localization and culturalization - if ꦉyou're doing the former, don't bother."

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Apr 2, 2008