Remedy Entertainment and Tencent have just announced the cancelation of their game project that was codenamed Kestrel. Project Kestrel had a small team working on the early concept stage of a premium cooperative multiplayer game.
The game was being developed by Remedy, co-financed with Tencent, and to be co-published with Tencent. The project started in November 2023 as a reboot from an earlier project codenamed Vanguard.
According to the press release, the decision to cancel codename Kestrel will allow Remedy to focus more on the other games in its portfolio. Other ongoing game development projects will get experienced developers reassigned from Kestrel. In addition, the planned investment needs for Kestrel are removed and Remedy’s overall recruitment needs are reduced.
Remedy’s CEO Tero Virtala said:
“Codename Kestrel showed early promise, but the project was still in its early concept stage. Our other projects have advanced well and are moving to the next stages of development, and increasing focus on them provides us with benefits. We can reallocate talented Kestrel developers to these other game projects, and many of our support functions get additional focus on their operations. This is yet another means to ensure that our game projects continue advancing well. I want to thank our Kestrel development team. Though we decided to discontinue the project for wider Remedy benefits, our team has done good work and provided us with valuable learnings. I also want to thank Tencent for their partnership so far. They have been very professional and supportive.”
In my opinion, this is good news. Remedy is a studio that has been focusing on single-player games. That’s its DNA and that’s what it knows to do best. And while a multiplayer game would provide the team with some extra revenue, it would put a lot of pressure on it.
It’s also worth noting that according to previous reports, Alan Wake 2 hasn’t earned back yet its cost. Remedy has stated that the game’s sales are better than those of CONTROL. So, in theory, the game should be profitable in the foreseeable future.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Big blow for Remedy, I also wonder why Alan Wake 2 is not selling.
All the wolves are howling Wouuuukeee
Fantastic news.
Indeed
haha, y’all are cruel and I enjoy it.
Imagine the characters in a multiplayer game made by nuRemedy, YUCK. good riddance.
Remedy should cancel everything with their woke partnership with Baby Inc. I can guarantee you that Mona in the max payne remake 1&2 will be a negro woman.
If so then it’s a pass for me and not because there is a black woman in the game. There are black women in the world so there’s no reason that there aren’t black women in games but there is no reason in the world to replace Mona Sax with a black woman other than to push political correctness in video games and it’s just silly. I’ve been replaying MP2 every once in awhile since shortly after it came out and I have no problem continuing to do so if Remedy can’t make a decent remake without the BS.
He’s just speculating … But I doubt Remedy will alter the characters.
They’ll play safe especially after Alan Wake II’s low sales.
Max Payne Remake needs to sell well for both 2K and Remedy … They won’t risk it with such design change choices.
It’s take2’s property meaning remedy will probably be contractually obligated to make sure it hits the right “investor quotas”.
With Baby Inc tied to them and running through their games with a sledgehammer, I highly doubt we see apart from Max himself any of the original characters stay white though.
I like Remedy games, at least in the past, loved the max payne franchise, but after AW 2, I press X to Doubt.
Yea … I get the Remedy’s diversity quota for new games but I am pressing x for doubt for the Max Payne Remake … some very minor characters might get the inclusivity update but I doubt for more important characters like Mona Sax or Vladimir Lem
I thought Remedy couldn’t get any worse.
A hyper woke studio releasing boring overpriced games that don’t sell. Games without replay value, narrated by Sweet Baby Inc.
I was wrong, adding China’s Tencent to the mix makes Remedy even worse.
It’s between Remedy and Kojima for the most overhyped pointless game developers.
Remedont just needs to focus on not messing up Max Payne, which seems
like it might be a lot harder then it should be for this studio.
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