BC Business
A rendition of the Nickel development at West Fifth Avenue and Alberta Street
Relic Entertainment, the venerable Vancouver video game developer, is getting a new mothership. In mid 2019, Relic will move from its current Yaletown HQ to Nickel, a 71,000-square-foot property being developed by PC Urban Properties Corp. on a former industrial site in Mount Pleasant. The company, whose neighbours will include Saje Natural Wellness, will lease roughly 65 per cent of the building at West Fifth Avenue and Alberta Street.
After the move, Relic plans to grow its head count from 180 today to as many as 350. This expansion illustrates the tech sector’s insatiable appetite for downtown office space—and the scarcity of traditional industrial land in Vancouver.
Nickel will stand on what was once Hudson Plating, a manufacturer of chrome-plated industrial metals. Featuring views of the North Shore Mountains and downtown, the building will house light industrial tenants on its ground floor and mezzanine and office/creative space on the three floors above.
Founded in 1997 by Alex Garden and Luke Moloney, Relic was part of a wave of independent video game companies that sprang up in the wake of EA Canada. Relic, whose rivals included Black Box Games and Radical Entertainment Inc.—acquired by EA and Vivendi Universal SA, respectively—burst onto the scene with strategy title Homeworld. Japanese giant Sega Games Co. Ltd. bought the company from now-defunct U.S. publisher THQ Inc. in 2013. Right now, Relic is working with Microsoft Studios on the next chapter of the Age of Empires series.