The storied legacy of Sins of a Solar Empire began way back on October 10th, 2006 - announcement day! This was long before my time at Stardock - or before I’d even heard of it, for that matter - but fortunately for me, our forums hold a great deal of history that’s just a few search queries away.

From Brad’s welcome post:

“Stardock Entertainment, the creators of Galactic Civilizations, and Ironclad Games which includes developers from Homeworld: Cataclysm, have teamed up to bring you an epic real-time, multiplayer, space strategy game that combines much of the epic scale of a traditional 4X strategy title with the real-time 3D experience found in releases such as Homeworld, Total Annihilation, and other such games.”

A screenshot from Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment

Whenever we embark on the endeavor of releasing a new game, we always do so with the same level of excitement and earnest hope that it will entertain gamers as much as we have enjoyed the process of creating it. While we were certainly proud of the work we did on Sins of a Solar Empire, we didn’t anticipate just how beloved this series would end up being.

On February 4th, 2008, Sins of a Solar Empire was released. You could find it on actual shelves in actual stores - something that feels like such a thing of the distant past in these days of digital distribution. 

Box art for Sins of a Solar Empire

Something we’ve become known for with our games is putting them out for testing prior to release. While that’s a lot more common with other companies nowadays, we were doing it as far back as 2008 with Sins of a Solar Empire. You could sign up to be in the beta and have the opportunity to share feedback as the game developed and grew - much like we do with almost all of our titles.

The age of digital distribution has made putting games out for beta testing a lot easier than it was 15 or more years ago, that’s for sure! Although, I won’t lie - there is a part of me that truly misses seeing PC games on the shelves in stores. The last time we released a physical product of a game - to my knowledge, anyway - was when we released Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion back in 2012.

A screenshot from the Sins of a Solar Empire II Technical Preview

It’s pretty incredible to have come so far and finally be looking at a brand-new Sins game. Sins of a Solar Empire II has long been a dream for all of us at Stardock and at Ironclad, and we’re so thrilled to be working alongside old friends to breathe new life into such a beloved series.