After nearly seven years of being bombed and battered, Company of Heroes' online infrastructure is in need of a break. Servers located at the game's old hosting company - the now Ubisoft-owned Quazal - are due to be shut down on May 7th. Is this the end of the war? Not quite. Replacement Steamworks servers have already been parachuted in, giving fans the chance to migrate over before the original host's honourable discharge.

If you own the game on Steam, you'll already have the new version, the aptly titled "Company of Heroes (New Steam Version)", in your Library. It's a single launch option - so any expansions have been rolled into the DLC tab of the listing's properties menu.

Owners of other versions will need to transfer their games, by adding their CD Keys into the "Activate a Product on Steam" option.

It's a bit of an odd situation. Some players may feel justifiably aggrieved by this service switch. But while the sudden requirement of the Steam client might not be universally welcomed, it's surely a preferable option to a complete shutdown of the old servers.

Plus, it could be worse - the original Dawn of War 2 is still tied to Games for Windows Live.

Thanks, Strategy Informer.