Twenty years, six months, and twenty-two days ago, on June 29, 2004, Soldiers: Heroes of World War II was released. It quickly became a fan favorite and even climbed to #5 on the UK charts. It was the first game created by Best Way, and many of us still remember the excitement of playing it back then.
For two decades, the game slowly gathered dust and began showing its age. Random crashes, trouble running on modern systems, and the disappearance of every multiplayer option one after another. We miss GameSpy, too, along with all the memories built around it.
The community kept the game alive using every workaround it could find, from virtual LAN tools, port forwarding, and plenty of stubbornness. Players love this old grandpa of a game, even when he grumbled back at us.
Today, that changes. We’re breathing new life into Soldiers, the project that started everything for us and gave us our first taste of what it feels like to see players enjoy something we created.
We’ve actually been working on Soldiers behind the scenes “again” for a while. We never spoke about it publicly, and we know a fresh update appearing out of nowhere wasn’t on anyone’s 2025 bingo card. It wasn’t on ours either.
We know many of you have a list of questions. We’ll try to answer them, just not all at once. We’d like to go through them piece by piece in future posts.
For now, we’d like to share what’s new. The game now runs smoothly on Windows 10 and 11, supports UI scaling for 4K resolution and widescreen displays, makes better use of multi-core CPUs, and offers V-Sync along with smoother rendering through DirectX 9. There’s also a long list of smaller improvements and plenty of bug fixes. And to top it off, we’ve added four new bonus missions and official Workshop support.
You can find the full R1.28.4 patch notes attached to this post.
Sincerely,
The Best Way Team
Did you know?
- One of the original developers was only 25 when the game launched.
- In Eastern Europe, it was released as В тылу врага (Behind Enemy Lines), and in Poland as Soldiers: Ludzie Honoru (Soldiers: Men of Honor).
- We’ve prepared a step-by-step guide to help you upload your mods to the Steam Workshop.
R1.28.4 Patch notes
Highlights
- Added Steam Workshop support. Players can now upload and download mods via Steam Workshop.
- Added Steam network multiplayer support
- Added Steam friends integration. Players can invite friends to coop/multiplayer sessions.
- Added support for Windows 10 and 11 support
- Added 4K support by upscaling
- Added support for widescreen monitors
- Enhanced multi-core CPU support
- Improved the net code
- Added multi-language localization support similar to the GEM RTS engine. (.en, .ru, .de, etc.)
Generic
- Added support for Windows 10 and 11 support
- Added Steam Workshop support. Players can now upload and download mods via Steam Workshop.
- Added Steam achievements & stats support to the engine, facilitating the future introduction of mission achievements.
- Added multi-language localization support similar to the GEM RTS engine. (.en, .ru, .de, etc.)
- Removed StarForce DRM protection
- User profiles have been relocated to “AppData\Local\Soldiers Heroes of World War II\”
- Old game saves are compatible with the new update. They can be transferred to the new profile folder and will function without issue.
- In addition to Steam Workshop support, manual mod installation is still supported. To install a mod manually, place it in the “AppData\Local\Soldiers Heroes of World War 2\mods” folder.
Stability
- Fixed crashes caused by access to uninitialized/wrong memory
- Fixed memory leaks
- Enhanced multi-core CPU support
Graphics
- Added 4K support by upscaling
- Added support for widescreen monitors
- Added DirectX 9 support
- Added V-Sync to the game settings
- Added automatic detection and selection of the discrete GPU
- Fixed aspect ratios in mission intros, loading screens, and other similar elements.
- Fixed an issue causing shadow noise artifacts when scrolling the camera.
- Removed deprecated DirectX 8
- Removed deprecated game settings. (16/32-bit Colour depth, Compress textures, Mip filtering, etc.)
Multiplayer
- Added Steam network multiplayer support
- Added Steam friends integration. Players can invite friends to coop/multiplayer sessions.
- Improved the net code
- Fixed various Out-of-Sync errors in multiplayer
- Removed deprecated net code and lobby libraries - DirectPlay, GameSpy Arcade (GSA), and All-Seeing Eye (ASE).
Gameplay
- Auto-assignment now automatically assigns units to the specified player in co-op.
- Adjusted auto-assignment so that available units are assigned to the nearest player in co-op.
- Fixed an issue that affected the processing of movement orders.