>>719220401
They were thinking "We make Company of Heroes anyway, so if we make Dawn of War into Company of heroes, we effectively only have to make one game. Then just copy+paste this game to keep the license. We'll print money!"

And to be fair, Relic was right. Dawn of War 2 outsold Dawn of War Soulstorm so much that it isn't even comparable. Dawn of War 2 roflstomped Company of Heroes sales as well. Dawn of War 2 was the best selling RTS ever made up until Starcraft 2 came out.
AND
to add insult to the injury.

Dawn of War 2 also introduced the first microtransactions in the series. It's not like that anymore because of the complete edition, but when it came out you had to pay to unlock individual heroes and all of their upgrades/abilities. You didn't get that shit for free, and if you want to play a different faction every time a new expansion came out? Better pay up, pal. You want to put a pirate hate on that Ork? 15 bux, asshole. Each new faction has three heroes and you're not getting them or their wargear for free.

It was such a cash cow that they thought they could copy+paste this into Dawn of War 3 and rip off wholesale League of Legends and people would just put up with it. This killed the franchise and almost sank Relic. Which, as you can see by the state of this Remaster, they deserved it.