Remedy, the creators of Alan Wake and Control, have had a good six months. The company’s revenue has risen by 63 percent, which is just the sort of good news you want to be able to tell your parents, and at the same time the company completed buying all the rights to Control from publishers 505 Games, as part of its plans to become fully independent of external publishers. Lovely to be them. However, despite all this good news, it seems Remedy’s latest game, three-player co-op shooter FBC: Firebreak, is still struggling. But Remedy isn’t giving up on it.
Back in July, while acknowledging the launch hadn’t gone as well as hoped, Remedy’s Thomas Punha tried to downplay the significance of the very low player counts on Steam. “Steam is a very important part of the business of FBC: Firebreak,” he told GameSpot. “The Steam [active player count] is a very easy statistic to dig up, but it isn’t everything.”
However, it seems like it’s still an awful lot. In the company’s latest financial report, Remedy CEO Tero Virtala concedes that PC was where Firebreak had been intended to best succeed, but it has instead fared vastly better on console thanks to subscription deals. “On Steam, which was planned as the primary consumer sales channel on PC, the launch underperformed,” says Virtala. “The game’s initial onboarding experience and mission structure resulted in high early player drop-offs and an influx of negative reviews. As players spent more time in the game and we released updates improving the game, sentiment in reviews turned more positive.”
Well, that’s kinda true. The game remains on “Mixed” reviews on Steam, although it’s trending slightly more positively. Currently 68 percent of the 1,685 reviews are positive, although even this stat belies just how few people are playing. It’s all very well to say players are having a better time, but how many? To this day, the game has an all-time peak simultaneous player-count of 1,992, and that was two months ago. In the last 24 hours, the game peaked at 24 people. It’s a colossal flop.
The higher (although not stated) numbers on console are likely because the game was included day-one on both Game Pass and PS Plus, meaning anyone with a sub can take a risk-free look, even, if they–like most humans–will struggle to coordinate three people to play at the same time. Still, you make money by putting your games on these services, as Virtala points out:
“Commercially, we were unsatisfied with the launch-phase consumer sales of FBC: Firebreak. Thus far, FBC: Firebreak’s commercial performance has largely been driven by the Xbox and PlayStation subscription service agreements. A considerable portion of the revenues from these agreements will still be recognized throughout the contract period.”
Despite all this, Remedy is valiantly sticking with Firebreak, even though I think anyone would give them a pass at this point. There’s still a “Major Update” coming in September, which the company plans to support with a marketing campaign in an effort to turn its fortunes around. Virtala adds, “We are committed to continuing to work on FBC: Firebreak, engaging with the community, and expanding the game.”
In better news, the report states that Control 2 is meeting its milestones, and the Max Payne 1 & 2 remake “continues its progress and remains in full production.” Meanwhile, the original Control has now sold over 5 million copies, which is stunning. And the company is well on its way to becoming self-sustaining as a self-publishing studio freed from publisher pressure and fees.
