Blackbird Interactive was founded in 2007 by Rob Cunningham and several other former members of Relic Entertainment. According to Cunningham, Relic's parent company and publisher, THQ, were no longer interested in making more ambitious or different types of strategy game, instead preferring to focus on their established franchises, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. For this reason, several members left to found Blackbird. Blackbird retained a working relationship with THQ and Relic, however, assisting them in the re-coding needed to make Company of Heroes and its expansions work on the Steam platform.