The State of RTS Games in 2024

The ’90s were the undeniable golden age for real-time strategy games. Everyone just seemed fascinated by the idea of constructing a well-defended base, gathering resources, drawing green boxes around assorted units, and sending them into battle against a human or AI opponent. People loved playing these games, studios loved making them. Combined together this resulted in a very lively esports scene, to the point where there were actual TV channels dedicated to broadcasting StarCraft matches.

This changed somewhere around the mid-2000s. We can’t say with certainty why. Some blame the new generation of gamers not resonating that well with the RTS genre, others the astonishing popularity of MOBAs that tapped into the same potential player pool, a few glance sideways at the perceived super-human APM needed to play these games at a high level, and the rest blame the developers chasing that elusive esports bag to the detriment of making an actual fun game first. But the results are clear and undeniable. These days RTS games are seen as a tough-to-get-into niche, not one of the most popular video game genres around.

If you do find yourself in that niche, or if you’re just curious about how the genre fares here in 2024, this article will look into the current state of RTS games. Perhaps you’ll be surprised to learn that the genre has actually been experiencing a bit of a resurgence as of late. As such, we’ll both examine the current RTS landscape and the big names within it, and highlight some of the exciting new RTS titles that will soon be entering the market.

Here are the games we’ll be looking at:

• Established Titles
  • StarCraft II
  • WarCraft III
  • Age of Empires II
  • Age of Empires IV
  • Command & Conquer Remastered Collection
  • Beyond All Reason
  • Company of Heroes 3
• Exciting Newcomers
  • Stormgate
  • Age of Mythology: Retold
  • Tempest Rising
  • ZeroSpace
  • Godsworn
  • IMMORTAL: Gates of Pyre
  • D.O.R.F.
• Honorable Mentions
  • Littlewargame
  • Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

Established Titles

StarCraft II

Blizzard developed StarCraft II as the more user-friendly iteration of their RTS formula, where player skill expression comes from actually playing the game, not actively fighting its clunky outdated engine. It took some iteration and further refinement since the game’s original release back in 2010, but its quality of life improvements together with a high degree of complexity and the enduring popularity of the setting itself, allowed StarCraft II to remain the biggest and most popular RTS out there even at a time when the genre itself isn’t doing too hot.

Since Blizzard doesn’t release any official player numbers, we have to use third-party resources to try and gauge the game’s current popularity. According to ActivePlayer, Starcraft II tends to average around 100,000 unique daily players. What we need to consider here is that back in 2017, the game’s online component went free-to-play, meaning that you can hop in and play StarCraft II with no barrier to entry. This, however, includes ranked matches as well as custom and co-op games. So while we have no way of knowing just how many people are interested in the game’s main competitive modes, even accounting for the custom game players, you shouldn’t wait too long to find an opponent of similar skill should you decide to dip your toes into the pool of StarCraft II.

Another piece of evidence pointing towards the game’s enduring health is its esports scene. It might not be breaking any records like Dota 2’s The International, but this year’s Esports World Cup for StarCraft II which took place just a month ago in August 2024, had a combined prize pool of over $1 million. The two finalists split $550,000 of it, with $400,000 going to the winner and $150,000 to the runner-up. Beyond that, there are plenty of other smaller tournaments for the game happening on the regular, ensuring that should you make StarCraft II your RTS of choice, you’ll have no shortage of high-level play to study in order to improve your own game.

And considering that all of this is happening roughly 4 years after the game went into maintenance mode, you can be reasonably certain that the players sticking with it do it for the love of the game, not because they’re chasing some latest FOMO-driven Battle Pass or something along these lines.

WarCraft III

When WarCraft III launched back in 2002, it revitalized Blizzard’s RTS formula by introducing heroes you could gear up and level. This addition gave players something to do on the map that wasn’t just building bases and optimizing their economies. A lot of people resonated with this change. Whether or not it made WarCraft III more popular than StarCraft is pretty much impossible to say, though, as looking at the raw sales figures is useless on account of DotA and other custom games.

WarCraft III, after all, is responsible for the creation of the whole MOBA genre. DotA might not have been the first ever example of what we today call a MOBA, but it was the first to achieve the level of popularity needed to solidify it as its own thing. And because of this popularity, there were plenty of people getting WarCraft III just to play DotA, while the game itself was the first to start “leaking” its RTS player base to this new genre.

Even so, the game always maintained a dedicated player base that kept the scene alive throughout all its lows brought first by DotA and then World of Warcraft. So finally, Blizzard seemed keen on revitalizing the scene back in 2018 when they announced WarCraft III: Reforged. Hot on the heels of StarCraft: Remastered which was a faithful upgrade and gave people some faith in Blizzard’s remastering abilities, Reforged was supposed to be a more ambitious project, vastly updating the game’s visuals, overhauling its campaign, and overall updating the game to a modern standard.

Entire books can be written about what went wrong during the development of Reforged. Suffice it to say, it ended up a complete mess, broke some Metacritic records for lowest ratings ever, and made a lot of people very upset. But despite all that, the Reforged release wasn’t all bad. It brought with it more frequent balance updates and some truly experimental patches shaking up the very stale at that point meta, making new units and strategies viable, and just keeping things fresh in a game that up until that point was considered “solved.”

The botched release that managed to remove some crucial online play features also prompted the community to find a solution to these new issues. Which gave us W3Champions – an independent matchmaking ladder ran and supported by the players themselves. As of this writing, W3C averages around 3000 unique players and 6000 games a day. On top of that, sometime after the initial release of Reforged, Blizzard did add a more-or-less functional ladder of their own to the game, creating another convenient way to find online games.

And even though the times of grand WarCraft III tournaments are behind us now, there are still plenty of smaller ones that allow strong players to compete against one another, and the rest of us to learn from them.

Age of Empires II

Released originally all the way back in 1999, Age of Empires II is the RTS that truly stood the test of time. A completely different style of RTS when compared to Blizzard’s games, the Age of Empires series tends to focus on maintaining a healthy economy spread between numerous resource types, an overwhelmingly large worker population, and an almost rock-paper-scissors-type unit counter system.

Revitalized back in 2019 thanks to its Definitive Edition, Age of Empires II can now boast pleasant visuals, compatibility with modern PCs, and very modest system requirements. On top of that, it currently has a total of 45 playable civilizations and an impressive selection of single-player scenarios and campaigns, making it really easy to get into even if you’re not looking to jump straight into competitive games.

Available through Steam, the game maintains a healthy population, averaging 20,000 daily unique players, with the game’s all-time peak hitting a total of 38,725 concurrent players. Considering the game is also available through Microsoft’s Xbox store and on the Xbox Game Pass service (that’s also available on PC), that means that in reality, it has even more active players. Age of Empires II also has its fair share of regular tournaments, with prize pools hovering around the $50,000-$70,000 mark. It may not quite hit the StarCraft II levels, but it’s still very much respectable.

Age of Empires IV

Developed in collaboration between several studios, one of them being Relic Entertainment, Age of Empires IV is the latest entry in the venerable series. Released in 2021, the game received its first expansion pack in 2023, and it’s still going strong. As of this writing, the game averages between 12,000 and 15,000 unique daily players on Steam, plus however many are playing it through the Xbox store and Xbox Game Pass, which is quite a success story for a modern RTS.

Even though it largely follows the classic Age of Empires formula, you can still feel Relic’s DNA all over the place while actually playing Age of Empires IV, which is a great thing if you’re a fan of the Dawn of War or Company of Heroes series. The game’s main standout feature is how different the available civilizations play compared to the rest of the series, leading to more exciting matchups and a more fun learning curve.

Age of Empires IV’s single-player campaigns also deserve a mention. They’re arranged in such a way that they follow various notable events from history, like the Hundred Years’ War, while seamlessly integrating gameplay sections with a documentary-style narration. The documentary sections not only provide background on what happened, when, and why, but also feature a series of neat asides dedicated to stuff like armor making, trebuchets, and the proper way to handle a crossbow. They also feature some familiar faces, if you’re someone who frequents the history corners of YouTube, like Tod Cutler from Tod’s Workshop, plus many other notable historians.

On the competitive side of things, Age of Empires IV does get its fair share of tournaments. They might not be as numerous and stacked prize pool-wise as their Age of Empires II counterparts, but they’re still nothing to turn your nose at.

Command & Conquer Remastered Collection

Once a quintessential RTS series exhibiting its own signature style that’s completely unlike either the Blizzard or the “Age of” games, the Command & Conquer series lay dormant for a while following the lukewarm reception of both the third entry in the main Command & Conquer series and its Red Alert spin-off. There were some occasional attempts to revitalize the series in various ways, including a mobile game and a browser MMO, but none of them were particularly successful.

But then in 2020, we got Command & Conquer Remastered Collection – a remastered version of the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert games featuring updated visuals, modern PC compatibility, upscaled cinematics, revitalized online functionality, and some bonus “making-of” type goodies. And while the Remastered Collection didn’t exactly create a booming competitive scene, it was very well-received and offered a fantastic way to experience some true RTS classics for modern players.

Beyond All Reason

If the main thing you want out of an RTS is a large scale, then chances are you’ve enjoyed some iteration of Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander over the years. And if you want to relive that experience in a somewhat more modern package, and perhaps take your battle plans online, then you should direct your attention to Beyond All Reason.

You can download and play the game for free from the developers’ website right now, with a Steam version currently in the works. On top of the abovementioned large scale, Beyond All Reason offers a fairly unique approach to resource gathering, more realistic damage models, and greater importance of terrain compared to most other RTS games. With its large selection of units, Beyond All Reason is perhaps best played in a team match, where each of the players focuses on a specific aspect of real-time warfare.

When we were writing this, the game had around 600 live players, which is pretty solid for a niche game without a Steam page at a random time of day. And while if you decide to give Beyond All Reason a shot now, you’ll be limited to its multiplayer modes, when the game eventually comes to Steam, the developers intend it to feature a robust single-player campaign as well.

Company of Heroes 3

While Age of Empires IV can be considered the rare modern RTS success story, Company of Heroes 3 started out as the more common RTS failure. Relic Entertainment’s latest entry in another venerable series launched back in 2023 to mixed reviews complaining about both the game’s single-player campaigns and its multiplayer balance. The game peaked at around 36,000 concurrent players on Steam, averaging about 3,000 daily players right now, not even 2 years after its launch.

However, while Relic’s acquisition by an investment group seemed to spell doom for the beloved WWII RTS series, updates have actually become more frequent since the developer’s departure from Sega, and a recently released roadmap suggests the game will continue to receive support for the foreseeable future. The state of the game has also improved dramatically overall, as can be seen in a dev video showcasing the changes since launch.

Exciting Newcomers

Stormgate

Developed by a team of mostly Blizzard veterans now working together as Frost Giant Studios, Stormgate was originally positioned as a passion project aiming to bring a new Blizzard-style RTS to the people itching for one, now that WarCraft is all about the World of it, and there doesn’t seem to be any plans for a new StarCraft game.

A lot of RTS enthusiasts started out excited about this project. But as time went on, that excitement kept waning to the point that when Stormgate launched into Early Access on Steam, it didn’t take long for it to find itself in the Mixed reviews territory. Which is understandable, seeing how the game was originally advertised as free-to-play but then had a Kickstarter campaign asking the game’s potential players for some additional funds. And then we also learned that the game’s campaign, the thing that’s supposed to attract the majority of the game’s potential audience, will not only cost money, but you won’t even be able to buy it upfront and instead will be forced to keep buying small chunks of it as separate bits of DLC. And of course, there will also be cosmetic DLC on top of that. These aren’t exactly the actions you’d expect from an unproven product looking to break into a niche market.

Stormgate then launched into Alpha, then Beta, and now it’s available in Early Access, allowing just about everyone to take it out for a spin. If you do, you’ll soon discover that Frost Giant took their Blizzard heritage a bit too close to heart with the game’s three factions consisting of human space marines, space demons specializing in brute strength and massive armies, and high-tech space angels. The currently available campaign missions also seem to follow the Blizzard template of storytelling minus that studio’s signature charm. And the actual gameplay sits somewhere between StarCraft II and WarCraft III, but in such a way that both SCII and WCIII players can find plenty of features they don’t enjoy seemingly lifted straight from the game they like less between these two. And that really begs the question of why any SCII or WCIII player would jump over to Stormgate if what they’ll be getting is essentially their game, but worse.

Pair that with performance issues and visuals/audio that leave a lot to be desired, and Stormgate seems to be primed for failure. The Early Access release model can theoretically allow it to right its course before it is too late, but that would require a lot of effort and some major overhauls. Luckily, according to some recent Steam updates, the developers seem open to player feedback, and perhaps in time they’ll be able to deliver a product all RTS fans can enjoy. It will be quite an uphill battle for them, though, as slightly over a month after its Early Access launch, Stormgate is averaging roughly 400 daily players, with its all-time peak currently sitting at 4,854 players.

Age of Mythology: Retold

Released in 2002, Age of Mythology was an Age of Empires spin-off that introduced all sorts of mythological creatures and heroes to the series’ usually fairly grounded settings and unit compositions. It was also the first entry in the “Age of” series to have truly distinct factions, a couple of decades before Age of Empires IV. This, combined with a phenomenal soundtrack and a memorable atmosphere made it a cult classic for a lot of people. The game’s campaign that was more story-driven and engaging than those of its predecessors also made it very easy to like.

For whatever reason, Age of Mythology didn’t get the enduring following of something like Age of Empires II. But with Age of Empires IV doing quite alright for itself, Microsoft and Xbox Games Studios figured now was the time to revisit the past. And so, on September 4, 2024 Age of Mythology: Retold launched. This wasn’t a mere upscaling remaster, but instead a proper attempt to breathe new life into the game.

The Retold version overhauled the way God Powers and unit skills work, aiming to provide more dynamic gameplay and give its players more direct control, while also introducing some ease-of-use features aimed at newer RTS players. It also came with a promise of at least two expansions adding new Pantheons (acting as the game’s civilizations), as well as new gods for the existing Pantheons. Time will tell whether these additions will be able to revitalize the game and bring in a new audience, but they sure seem promising enough. On Steam alone, the game peaked at 25,879 concurrent players during its release weekend, and since then it’s been comfortably siting at around 20,000 daily players and Very Positive reviews.

What dampens that excitement somewhat is the fact that the Retold edition launched with some unnecessary changes to the game’s art. Namely, all the Deity portraits were replaced with new versions that were clearly made with the help of AI tools, giving them an off-putting Uncanny Valley look. What’s worse is that the classic Deity portraits are now being sold as DLC, which just feels like a slap in the face to both old-time fans and actual artists alike. On top of that, the campaign voice-acting was completely re-recorded. Unlike the AI abominations, campaign voices are a matter of preference, but it’s hard not to miss the old voices that the fans have been associating with the characters all these years. Hopefully, though, the new voice actors are a sign that the upcoming expansions will be continuing the game’s story with new campaign missions, and the developers simply wanted to re-record the old voices for consistency’s sake.

A bit worrying is that straight out the gate Age of Mythology: Retold hides an entire Major God for the Norse – Freyr – behind its Premium Edition. Freyr is accompanied by three Minor Gods in Ullr, Aegir, and Vidar and constitutes a significant addition to the game. It should’ve been one of the remaster’s main selling points, not a blink-and-you-miss-it footnote of the more expensive edition. And while a new Major God is very much welcome, the way it’s released raises some concerns regarding the monetization of the game’s future content.

Tempest Rising

If you’re a Command & Conquer fan, don’t worry, you too have an exciting new RTS to look forward to. Developed by Slipgate Ironworks and 2B Games, Tempest Rising is that game. From the first screenshots, the game looks and plays exactly like a modern version of a classic C&C RTS. Taking place in an alternate-history sci-fi world, Tempest Rising promises to bring us classic RTS gameplay, 3 asymmetrical factions each with its own economy and design, 2 extended single-player campaigns with some over-the-top briefing cutscenes in-between, and all the traditional game modes.

Currently listed as Coming Soon on Steam, the game already had several playable demos that painted an encouraging picture. At this point, it’s impossible to say whether the game will attract a competitive scene or how good the later missions of its campaign will be, but at the very least, Tempest Rising is already an admirable attempt to revive a dormant subgenre of RTS. And with Command & Conquer Remastered Collection clearly showing that there is interest in the C&C style of RTS, it’s nice to see a new studio attempting to pick up that mantle.

ZeroSpace

On the surface, ZeroSpace seems to be “the other Stormgate.” It’s a distinctly Blizzard-style sci-fi RTS that looks like it attempted to copy StarCraft II without making it too obvious.

But once you look past the somewhat generic art and the basic design of the game’s first two factions that, just as it is with Stormgate, are basically Not-Terran and Not-Zerg again, you begin noticing some clever ideas and intriguing twists. ZeroSpace’s other two factions seem considerably more inventive. These include the Xol, a faction of highly adaptable robots that can merge together and split to create entirely different units on the fly, making them highly adaptable. And then there’s the Legion, a faction that seems to play almost like a StarCraft II’s co-op commander, but in a classic RTS game. ZeroSpace is also often described as the “pro-powered” RTS – as in various professional RTS players were consulted while designing the game, with the goal of making it into a game packed with features real players actually want.

ZeroSpace also promises an epic single-player campaign, memorable hero units, and at least 6 mercenary factions. The latter will provide another twist where you’ll be able to recruit these mercenaries in any given game, greatly increasing the unit variety of every faction. At least in theory, all of this creates an RTS that feels both familiar and fresh at the same time, which is exactly what you want in a new title. Currently listed as Coming Soon, ZeroSpace is definitely a game to keep an eye on.

Godsworn

The ongoing resurgence of RTS games isn’t limited to assorted successors, spiritual or otherwise, to already established titles. Smaller studios are also entering the scene in an attempt to get a piece of the RTS pie. Like for example Godsworn that launched into Early Access in March 2024.

Inspired by history and mythology, Godsworn is developed by a small yet passionate team. The game’s main standout features revolve around faith, a special resource you’ll need to gather by worship and then be able to spend on building various mythical creatures and using god powers. The game’s heroes include the likes of archangel Michael, while its campaign, which can be played in co-op, revolves around the Baltic Crusades. The game’s visuals are also vibrant and pleasing to the eye, and overall it looks like a neat little RTS that even casual fans of the genre will easily enjoy. If you count yourself among those, this game should definitely be on your radar.

IMMORTAL: Gates of Pyre

The whole god theme seems to be quite popular in modern RTS games. IMMORTAL: Gates of Pyre is another neat-looking upcoming RTS that uses it for its background lore. Only instead of real historical deities, here the three available factions and their Immortal leaders are more fantasy-inspired.

The game’s lore is one of its big selling points, as it promises to regale us with a millennium-spanning story featuring God-Stars, Immortals, and impressive-sounding factions like the Angelic Empire of Q’rath, the Aru Matriarchy, and the Iron Republic of Jora. To support this lore, the game will have plenty of diverse PVE missions, as well as co-op multiplayer modes on top of its traditional competitive PVP modes. There will also be what the developers call a “Build Assist” mode that will allow you to automate your base construction and instead focus on the actual fighting, making the game more accessible to newcomers.

With no release date currently set, IMMORTAL: Gates of Pyre currently looks to be pretty far along in its development cycle, and as such should be on your wishlist if you’re at all interested in an intriguing new RTS.

D.O.R.F.

When talking about D.O.R.F. it’s important to first get the disappointment out of the way – the game’s title is not a play on the popular misspelling of Dwarf, and the game itself doesn’t feature everyone’s favorite bearded miners in any way shape or form.

What it does have is three distinct factions, air, land and sea battles, and a very striking and sharp industrial art style. Based on various promotional materials, D.O.R.F. looks to be a C&C style RTS, with its gameplay trailers making it resemble a cross between Red Alert and KKnD, an often-forgotten RTS classic.

Upon release, D.O.R.F. would be worth playing based on its rusty post-apocalyptic style alone. And if the developers manage to offer some enticing gameplay and a neat story on top of their visuals, they may find themselves with a sleeper hit on their hands. As such, we can’t wait for the official release date announcement for D.O.R.F.

Honorable Mentions

Littlewargame

If you’re in the mood to play a competent RTS right now, but you don’t want to buy or download anything, and even the idea of creating another account makes you recoil in disgust, then you should turn your attention to Littlewargame.

Completely free and playable directly from your browser, Littlewargame is a truly indie project that despite its simplistic visuals has all the bells and whistles a proper RTS should have. It also features a unique faction system where the game’s three factions are all available to you in the build menu and in theory, nothing is stopping you from combining them as you see fit. While it doesn’t have an epic campaign or hours of cinematics, Littlewargame is an RTS distilled down to its fundamentals. It’s super easy to get into and at the end of the day, it’s quite fun to play.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

To date, there have been a total of three Dawn of War games. The second one went into a more RPG adventure direction, the third introduced some MOBA-inspired elements and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

The original Dawn of War, though, deserves a special shout-out here as the RTS most deserving of a remaster. The first game in the series still had the classic RTS gameplay of building and defending your base while attempting to disrupt your opponent’s attempts to do the same. Only instead of the boring old worker-driven economy, Dawn of War had these resource-producing points scattered all over the map. This forced the players to actively move out from their bases from the very beginning of the match to actively fight over the available resources. Because of this, Dawn of War is the RTS that encourages the most action and clashes between its players, making it endlessly exciting. You add to that 9 truly unique playable factions, the stylish Warhammer 40,000 aesthetic, and what to this day remains the single coolest intro cutscene, and you get a game that simply deserves to be played.

However, in its current state, Dawn of War is barely playable. Its aspect ratio and UI are ill-suited for wide-screen monitors. The online connectivity now that the game was decoupled from GameSpy and uses Steam’s network instead is downright abysmal. There are numerous bugs and the kind of pathfinding that makes you long for the times you had to herd a group of Dragoons through a tight ramp. And worst of all, the player base is splintered between multiple editions and mods, turning matchmaking into an absolute nightmare.

So in a way, this here is a plea to Relic, Sega, or whoever else is in charge, to give the original Dawn of War the remaster it needs and deserves.

As you can see, the RTS games currently on the market, while not breaking any record, are still going strong. And on the horizon, we can see quite a few exciting new projects just itching to join the fray. Are there any upcoming RTS games you’re interested in? Don’t hesitate to let us know.