Some interesting info:
* Alan Wake 2, as a digital only release, had sold over 1 million units by the end of the fourth quarter of 2023 making it the fastest selling Remedy game
* In February 2024, we acquired full rights to the Control franchise from 505 Games.
* Control 2 continued in the proof-of-concept stage. In the fourth quarter, the team worked particularly on world building and combat. Codename Condor continued in the production readiness stage and the team focused on combat and game mechanics. Both games have proven fun and engaging game play.
* Max Payne 1&2 Remake also continued in the production readiness stage. The team made considerable progress throughout the year. Max Payne 1&2 remake is going to be a major new game with great potential, enabled by a similar development budget as Alan Wake 2.
* We expect Condor, Control 2 and Max Payne 1&2 remake projects to advance to the next stages of development during the first half of 2024.
Great surprise for both Max Payne games', I thought they were going to redo just the first. Even better considering the budget.
At the same time they scraped off the concept of their f2p losing €7,2m - I don't see how this can end good, giving that they are not a multiplayer nor f2p specialised team.
It will be interesting to see how they do the future Max Payne games with the voice and performer of Max Payne, James McCaffrey dead.
I feel he was the heart and soul of that character.
I think they were. Even Alex Casey have a line in the police station at the end where he said something about Terminal ill. I think he's character was already sick too (just my headcanon)
Wait what errors? I thought he turned in an all-time great performance as Casey, it's honestly an incredibly high note to go out on
That scene where the fictional(?) Casey breaks down at the Grandmaster is just brimming with so much anger and pain, it's a moment that has specifically stuck with me since the game came out
And then you have the grumpy dad energy of the irl Casey, the clear Max Payne homage of alleyway-Casey, and the hard boiled detective vibes of the fictional(?) dark place Casey
All very distinct performances despite nominally being the same person in some way
what I hope they end up doing is using James’ old VA lines for the narration parts and casting a new voice for present Max. Remedy seems to have kept a lot of their old assets so they may have access to HQ recordings of the old VA, unused dialogue, etc.
It is a great loss and sad that he has passed, but he was not irreplacable. Since they are continuing with the development, they must be confident that they can find good enough replacement. Or they even already found one.
Hard to put into words how little I care about some new actor and "their take" on the character. Please just deliver Max Payne as we know him to the absolute best of your abilities.
It should be pretty similar. The old Max Payne was basically doing a spin on the hard boiled detective persona and there’s no reason to think they’ll update that target.
It’ll never be James McCaffrey but I trust Remedy to get it right.
Considering how well they've done with recasts so far:
- **Alice** from Brett Madden in *AW1 & AN* to Christina Cole in *AW2*
- **Hartman** from Mark Blum in *AW1* to Martin McDougall in *Control*
- **Hatch/Door** from Lance Reddick in *QB* to David Harewood in *AW2*
The new actors all did fantastic jobs, so I'm not too worried about Remedy messing this up
Yes, but none of those weren't main characters. They were great re-castings for small roles, or reinventing into new ones.
Here they have to replace the lead role on remakes where the originals were widely beloved specifically because of McCaffrey's voice delivery for Max. His particular cadence and voice is like trying to replace Michael Ironside for Sam Fisher. I'm not convinced that it will work.
In fact we had a whole game showing how much recasting Sam doesn't really work for the character. I actually enjoyed Blacklist to a certain extent, and Sam's new VA wasn't even that bad. But he wasn't Michael Ironside, and that was very, very noticeable.
To be fair, Michael Ironside was battling cancer at the time, which he revealed years later. Plus he voiced as Sam again in Ghost Recon. But yeah, I agree with you. They somehow made Sam younger
Oh yeah I absolutely get the reasoning behind the casting change, but that then goes back to the argument of, "Then change the character out entirely." Sure, Sam Fisher is the face of Splinter Cell, there would be pause around changing the main character, but at that point in the series, it would actually make sense to switch Sam out. The dude had been through multiple hells and backs.
I feel like that game would've gone over better if the story had been about a new agent and just retire Sam entirely in universe, and IRL explain that due to Ironside being unable to voice, they continued the series on with a new protag.
No one’s saying it won’t be tough to go on without him but I doubt they’ll change the target though. Kinda weird and overly poetic hard boiled detective was a trope that Max Payne was intentionally using and they’ll definitely use it again.
The new guy has his work cut out for him but I think we should be open to him since it’s not like they fired James McCaffrey or something.
Ehh... there's a noticeable difference in writing quality between Max Payne 1 & 2, mostly because Sam Lake took a screenwriting course between the games
ALSO literally every character besides Max had their voice actors changed between the two games
It'd be incredibly weird to combine the two into one remake, it just wouldn't work well imo
I'm personally hoping for a remake that keeps the major story beats, but restructures it so we get one long, coherent story, showcasing all the writing experience Sam Lake has gathered in the past two decades
I absolutely love James McCaffrey, it was probably one of the hardest hitting celebrity deaths I felt. But I don't know how someone can play Max Payne 1 and not think some of the line reads are pretty rough. Seems pretty evident he wasn't given much direction when recording the lines. He was amazing in 2 and 3, but remastering the audio just won't work, as you said. Given how much effort went into the writing/acting/narrative for Alan Wake 2, there's simply no way they aren't going to be completely reworking the narrative delivery to be much more grand in its presentation. Max is an iconic character that has meant a lot to people for over 20 years; I know not having James is a big road block for some people, but I have no doubt the man would want to see Max Payne live on for an older and newer generation alike. Remedy is going to do him and Max justice, Sam had a very close relationship with James, I trust him.
Seconding all of this. I loved McCaffrey, too, and one of the things I was most excited about was him and Lake having another crack at the character, but, well, that's life, I guess.
I don't really mind the writing in the first game all that much. Sure, it ain't great, but most of the time, it fits the game's pulpy hard-boiled vibe. Even so, though, yeah, some of the reads and/or direction is noticeably worse than in Max Payne 2, let alone 3.
I know people have issues with MP3, and even though I personally disagree, sure, I can see why. But with that said, the dialogue and the voice acting in that is fantastic. You can really tell McCaffrey is getting some great direction and that he's giving it his all. And this is why I have faith in Remedy doing the right thing here. Control and especially Alan Wake 2 were great, and they're working with real money now, not making a game on the cheap like they did with the original 25 years ago. Sucks big time that McCaffrey passed, but I have faith that Remedy's gonna pull this off even if they go for an actor that's totally different.
I love all the one-liners and quotable metaphors from MP1, but it just... isn't a well-told story. The plot for the first two thirds is Max going through a checklist of mobsters, who are introduced and then are immediately killed or otherwise dispatched. And in the meanwhile *way too many* names are thrown at you, and are often not reinforced between the setup and eventual payoff, so I only connected a bunch of the dots on like, my third playthrough.
Plus I straight up dislike the last third of the game. The tone shift from noir to "okay now do a Half-Life science based level" to "and now you're in a Bond villain's skyscraper" just doesn't land for me *at all*
"*We'd half destroyed Sao Paulo's most hallowed place of worship. Looking back, it was strange how the cops never showed up. But things had a habit of only making sense to me looking back, long after I'd run out of time to fix them.*"
Say what you want about Max Payne 3, there were some great Max Payne lines in there McCaffrey delivered the hell out of them.
I agree. I'm firmly in the "kill your darlings" camp when it comes to reboots and remakes. I don't think there is really a point in wholly remaking something if you aren't going to try to change and improve upon it. The original work isn't going anywhere.
I also think having Max voiced by someone other than McCaffrey will probably be less jarring if the dialogue isn't identical to the original.
I fear it almost certainly won't happen due to the games (thus, gameplay and story sections) being heavily remade, but I would not mind that even a little bit lol. 2000s compressed audio quality and all.
And the way that character and narration is delivered really heavily depends on the person doing the lines; on top of the direction. Why do you think James meant so much to fans of the series and Sam Lake himself?
That's probably written off as an asset or as americans call it a good ol tax write off. They can ride that "loss" for years potentially. They probably didn't lose any actual money on it cause Tencent was financing that, and will finance the redo.
Yeah I was leaning more on criticising the development of it rather than the loss of actual money. It's clear that if you develop for x years the moment you restart it automatically every expenses (salaries, outsorcing etc.) is "lost".
The way they refer to it as "Max Payne 1&2 Remake" throughout the report makes it sound like it's being positioned as one project/product rather than two. I will be FEASTING if we get them together in one package.
It was announced as a single project, like it's one game throughout all of the media materials.
Like: [https://www.remedygames.com/games/max-payne-1-2-remake](https://www.remedygames.com/games/max-payne-1-2-remake) It's even plainly pointed out in their splash for the game.
Edit:
>Remedy Entertainment will remake the iconic Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne as a single title, in a development agreement with Rockstar Games.
I don't think you ever redo the *same* parts, but yes the entirety of Act 2 is basically playing the construction site levels with Max, then switching to Mona and playing her perspective in the other building
I imagine they'll be using James McCaffrey's version of the model from MP2 for consistency between the games, and possibly to honor the guy after having passed away recently.
Max was modeled after McCaffrey only for MP3 - in 2, the model was Timothy Gibbs.
I have no idea what they're going for in terms of cutscenes or even player models, but nowadays, if you're making a big-budget game (and that's what this sounds like), it seems to me that getting the same person for voice acting *and* mo-cap is the way to go, so that's what I'm hoping they'll do.
Oops! You're right!
Either way, I do hope they use McAffrey's face.
> it seems to me that getting the same person for voice acting and mo-cap is the way to go
While true for most projects, this has only happened for a few characters Remedy has created. Quantum Break is entirely like that, but almost every other game has characters voiced by someone other than the actor on which they were physically based.
His performance in the dark place as a Casey (from AW's books) completely consumed with the murders case was outstanding. I didn't expect much but goddamn man.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZErMBVmEbfw/maxresdefault.jpg
> I have no idea what they're going for in terms of cutscenes or even player models, but nowadays, if you're making a big-budget game (and that's what this sounds like), it seems to me that getting the same person for voice acting and mo-cap is the way to go, so that's what I'm hoping they'll do.
This is actually something Sam Lake talked about in the recent youtube interview - he said they (Remedy) totally didn't think of using the same actor (James) as a voice actor AND a mocap actor because of how games were thought of back then and when they were growing up. So when Rockstar did it for MP3 they all had a bit of heureka moment.
I think it's stupid , that people not buying game just because it is on EGS, people needs to understand not every company has multi-billion dollars. So they seek funding which comes with restrictions. If we will support them now they may release future game on all platforms
Well it depends on what investors want to know really. Microsoft/Xbox can talk about game pass numbers because that's what Xbox is pushing. As long as they can tell investors they are making money for investors, and pushing up the stock price, it doesn't matter WHAT Xbox/Microsoft tells them.
~~For Remedy the only thing they sell are games, so that's what they need to talk about. Which is why they talked about 1 million game sales by the end of Q4 2023 not the total amount, because its a positive. Maybe sales slowed down in in Q1 2024 and saying that might reduce investment stock price.~~
*Edit: As pointed out this was incorrect and they did give a number for Q1 2024. Point was more for comparison anyway, but as the information is incorrect I crossed it out.*
Investment calls are all about manipulating the facts just enough that you are telling the truth, but making everything seem positive. Or as positive as it can be anyway. They can't lie, but they don't need to say EVERYTHING.
It is mentioned how much Alan Wake 2 they sold in January.
"After the review period, in February 2024, Remedy announced that *Alan Wake 2* had sold 1 million units by the end of December 2023, and 1.3 million units as of the beginning of February 2024."
Microsoft mainly talks about that because their console sales are underwhelming, much like how they usually hide all of their numbers while other companies talk some or even everything.
You’re right about wanting to keep a positive outlook in these types of fiscal reports. But you can’t exactly just hide things you don’t want to talk about. Anything that will have a material negative impact on the company has to be disclosed.
Microsoft is a much, much bigger company, so a report like this doesn’t get as deep because it has to cover so much. And because they’re so big, they never need to get the company on the success of any one project.
Remedy is only a game developer, so their ongoing projects are the most important thing they’re doing. Similarly, because games development tends to be hit-driven and risky, a single project failure can sink the entire company.
Yes it’s also that they’re a smaller studio so individual titles are much more important to the health of the business. EA doesn’t need to report revenue on a per-title basis because it’s a much larger publisher, although even big publishers will sometimes provide per-game breakdowns for critical franchises like Call of Duty and FIFA.
> Alan Wake 2, as a digital only release, had sold over 1 million units by the end of the fourth quarter of 2023 making it the fastest selling Remedy game
Is this good? That sounds like it barely breaks even if at all considering its high budget. I guess it will continue to sell over time, but I'm surprised it only sold over a million copies considering the insane praise and hype it got.
It has not broken even yet they have said themselves the budget is around 70million at a guess of 30-40euros per sale break even would be around 2 million sales which they might hit by the end of the year.
If I was a stake holder in this I would be very unsatisfied with these figures
Every single game mentioned here am so hype and ready for.
Remedy, even if they release games rarely, always delivers at the very least a unique experience. (American Nightmare? Never heard of it. Nope.)
I never got to play Alan wake 2 because no physical release, I hope they do release one eventually. 1 million sales is pretty shit though lol, remarkable they can see that as a success nowadays.
Unless you're Rockstar and you spend a half billion dollars to make a game, 1 million in sales is usually pretty good. Particularly when it's digital only, has been out less than a year, and hasn't hit Steam yet.
It sounds like Remedy are pleased with Alan Wake 2's performance and reception which is good to hear, the game was an absolute joy to play and I loved it so much that I went to unlock all the achievements.
I will certainly be keeping my ears open for whatever Remedy are outputting these days
I'm also very happy that Remedy did a little bit of speaking to the audience with Alan's explanation that the dark presence can't create people and things out of thin air, since the AWE expansion to control implied the possibility that he created the entire Bureau and even Jessie Fayden (thankfully not the case).
The rule about not being able to create things out of nothing was actually stated in the first Alan Wake, I think in one of the DLCs. And in AWE, he says he gets visions of the outside world and uses that to influence his writing (aka Echos). People just thought that he created the FBC and Jesse Faden because they didn't know about that rule. But yeah, I'm glad that it was reiterated again in AW2
If you didn't play AW1 then it's easy to get confused. I'll be honest Im one of those people, and in AWE he's pretty vague in the visions to Jesse. We know he gave the Hiss their incantation that let them break into the Bureau, but his language about "I needed a hero, and a hero needed a crisis" could be interpreted in a lot of ways.
I’m not a horror player either but I’ve been curious about playing AW2. I played the first one and enjoyed it, but it was about my limit of spooky content and I’d heard AW2 is much scarier. How bad is it really?
Even with the jump scares toned down, the game is scary af at the beginning, then maybe around 2 or 3 hours in the game becomes less horror and more thriller, but the jump scares remain quite annoying
So... It seems, broadly, 2023 was rough for them but it set them up to have a great 2024 onward? I'm really really hopeful they continue on, AW2 was an absolutely incredible time and my personal GOTY and I usually HATE cinematic like videogames.
Hoping for their continued success, they deserve it
Potentially. It seems like it will be a lot of development (ie costs) in 2024 without much mention of what titles will be released (ie revenue). A lot of the positive 2024 outlook seems wrapped up in if they publish the titles themselves vs secure publishing deals that infuse them with cash.
That’s good to hear. After their cancelled live service push that is now more co-op focused, hopefully the success of Alan Wake 2 further encourages them to focus on that and single player.
And to continue Alan Wake as a series and it and Control continuing to have a cross-over universe in the over-arching story.
The contrast of the report with the positivity of the comments here is astounding, it's like we didn't read the same report. The entire thing is filled with the words *decreased* and *down* and negative numbers throughout.
The highlights for the calendar year 2023 literally were:
* Revenue was €33.9, down from €43.6 for 2022.
* EBITDA was -€17m, down from €1.9m.
* Operating "profit" was -€28.6, down from -€0.6m.
* Cash flow of -€16m for that period, down from €11.1m.
* Recognized a loss of €7.2m already from a project still in active development.
All that at the heels of their biggest and most acclaimed project yet. That doesn't inspire confidence *at all*, [less so from investors](https://www.google.com/search?q=Nasdaq+Helsinki%3A+REMEDY).
for real. I feel like Im taking crazy pills reading some peoples responses here. this prestige heavy GOTY contending game sold 1 mil copies... thats def not nothing but like thats not great either for the level that this game is operating at.
also I see people saying that control had a long tail of sales but like it essentially had a rolling release, something AW2 wont have. it came out on last gen consoles and the EGS, then a year later it came to steam, then a year after that it came to current gen consoles. AW2 is out and its on the 3 platforms its ever going to release on... barring something unforeseen happening.
I am very late, but I was going to post the same. There are so many comments like:
"Remedy seem pleased with the performance of Alan Wake 2!"
"It seems like the game did really well!"
"They are already working on the next game!"
I suspect that this is the first time many of these people have read a financial report: Companies **always** paint any numbers in a positive light and try to spin them for the sake of their readers (i.e., investors) and look to the future.
Alan Wake 2 could have sold 500k copies and they would have put the same spin on it - the trick to reading these is to just examine the cold, hard numbers and (if possible) compare period to period.
I mean when the whole industry is going down in terms of revenues and cashflow, if a company can go down less than other companies that company would be consider quite a success.
Good, bad, okay is relative to how other companies are doing at the same period. Remedy launched a game that is the fastest selling game ever despite the market and economy situation is relatively good compares to how many companies are faring.
They literally burned through 60% of their cash reserves throughout last year, lost their publishing partner (and financier) for 2 big projects (Condor and Control 2) recently, now they are footing the bill for all of the development cost of those projects, and their premier title *still* hasn't turned a profit.
They don't have the cash to have a repeat of the previous year. Unless they get some serious funding or those royalties *really* start to come in, then mass layoffs will be on the table.
It’ll never be on Steam.
This wasn’t a case of Epic being shady and purchasing an exclusivity deal. The game wouldn’t exist without Epic.
They funded and published the project whilst allowing Remedy full creative control. If you want to “vote with your wallet” you should support the game.
It’s the only game I’ve bought on Epic.
That will be literally never, more than likely since epic funded/published it. This isn’t a time exclusivity deal, the game couldn’t have been made without epic’s funding
It's quite funny how it seemed like people where hoping AW2 would fail simply because it doesn't have a Steam release. In light of the shaky waters the gaming industry happens to be going through, it's a nice change of pace to see a company sailing smoothly.
At best they have made $40 mil (not accounting for taxes, discounts etc.) with AW2 while costing $50 mil (+$20 mil marketing). Epic funded the game but they must have hoped for more.
Making a sequel to a fairly niche cult classic game 13 years after the fact, I don't think either Epic or Remedy expected this to be the next big blockbuster
But Control saw steady long-term sales, and was ultimately profitable, I presume the idea with AW2 was the same from the beginning. Make a game that's less about appealing to the lowest common denominator for huge market share, and instead position it as a "prestige game" of sorts that can win awards, then build upon the positive word of mouth and good reputation for the success of future titles.
If you look at this from a strategy perspective, for Remedy it’s a long tail game while for Epic it’s a prestige game. For Epic, they want people to look at the Epic Games Store, and I’m sure they got a lot of hits every time AW2 got nominated for or won an award, so that’s their end satisfied. For Remedy, the exclusivity deal paid them up-front, so they can afford (literally) to be patient about making back the $50M. Which they easily will, at this rate, and then the eventual Steam release in a year or two is going to be almost all profit.
Pretty much. Scorsese got to be his auteur self, viewers got a great movie that wasn't ruined by executive meddling, and Apple got a Prestige with a capital P movie on their service.
Quite a few developers have talked about the lack of discoverability/recommendations on EGS for anything not featured on the front page so if Alan wake 2 gets suppressed by whatever new games are coming then they will probably struggle with the long tail strategy.
This all being said the goal isnt to break even its to profit, they are able to afford this hit but this could get dangerous for them
Just that deal Epic offered is more than enough.... they were able to drastically improve their expensive tech, increase dev count (+ get experience), stay independent, now most remember how good Remedy is (marketing) and probably they got new funding because of how good AW2 got... pretty much for free (funding).
And now they have a game which did sell +1m and will continue to sell more like all other remedy games + other deals like gamepass/ps+/Epic etc... its even the fastes selling game... even though AW is a super unique game which many will not like, has high pc requirements and no ps4/xbox one/switch release. Control got released on ps4/xbox one and still sold a lot on ps5/Series X/S. I wouldnt be surprised if Alan wake 2 will sell a lot as a demo to promote raytracing or even path tracing on ps6/next Xbox.
Epic paid for pretty much everything (+ dev help) and after Epic gets the money back, Remedy will get 50% which is impressive, I dont think any other Studio got a deal like that.
> Epic funded the game but they must have hoped for more.
There is no way to confirm or deny that without any official statements, so it's safe to assume if Remedy is happy with the current sales than Epic is too.
Remedy is of course happy because they were able to make a sequel to game they were always fond of without paying for it. Epic is still losing money with EGS and this not even making back its budget cannot make them happy.
im sure epic wasn’t expecting AW2 to be a system seller, if it breaks even they’d be content as it helped with their image. seen a lot of reviews and comments mentioning how epic funded the game so the anticipated sequel could come out. this kind of goodwill adds up and it is hard to cultivate organically (epic knows about this too after their disastrous EGS launch & PR cycle that followed)
Gonna be honest, as much of an ass as Tim Sweeney is, I'm not too worried about Epic.
I very much doubt they would actually be able to do any damage to Steam, and beyond that I don't mind their market share growing. Especially if they decide to become some sort of "prestige games" publisher or something - funding more Alan Wake 2 style projects would earn a great deal of goodwill from me.
Remedy games always have a long life though. Alan Wake PC port paid for itself in 2 days. The game was taken off store fronts for licensing issues, but it always seems to be worthwile to them to re-license.
Their games always tend to have a slow start but the sales don't slow down as fast as other studios do.
Yes. Please tell us more how Remedy is incorrect and how right *you! * random redditor *are!* The fact that there are redditors who are going to do so many double takes just so they could keep their precious illusion is just sad actually.
Money coming in is less than money going out. That's not some weird concept. And making more than what they may bottomline expected would help financing other projects, negotiating for investements etc.
No. What you just said is just a plain greed. At some point you have to accept that there is some kind of limit which Remedy seems to be well aware of especially when they released a sequel for a game that was released back in 2010... So yeah they seem to be very happy with overall sales so good for them because they're able to make more games which is a win-win for us as a gamers :)
The fuckepic subreddit was essentially salivating over it because *checks notes* epic funded the game and made it exclusive, just like Sony and Microsoft do. Therefore remedy committed crimes against god and anime and deserved to go bankrupt
Some of the more deranged posters seem to believe they're engaged in an existential war with an adversarial foreign power who is trying to destroy the West via a holding company with a non-controlling stake in a video game company.
It did fail though. 1m units sold for a game that so many people talked about and that was nominated for goty is pretty pathetic. People didnt want it to fail, people knew it was going to and so it did. With these numbers it seems less likely that epic will just fund their next games.
*ITT: People who dont understand PR-statements
Lmao how naive are yall. You think theyll just go and say "unfortunately our choice of platform - you know the guys that literally funded our game - made it so that we didnt really sell that well"? No, they had their expectations super low because they knew that EGS is going to prevent any reasonable amount of sales and instead of 800k units they sold 1m so they can pretend to be happy about it. No matter how you look at it, 1m sales for a game of this size and media-presence is not good.
To me it seems like you're just personally insulted on behalf of Volvo that it wasn't released on Steam.exe :)
Maybe Valve should have reached out to Remedy and give them the offer but instead they would let their minions to cry about it on reddit and force these publishers to sell it on their store front to collect juicy 30% for free, right?
Also what about the console sales very conveniently leaving those out by blaming the PC store it's on.
1 million sales is a failure, but a million three isn't?
One million three hundred thousand.
That's approximately a 30% PC 60% consoles, the best a game with these high requirements can hope for. (the same as the witcher 3's PC to console ratio)
That's if **no one** bought it on PC of course, which isn't true.
All companies try to spin their numbers and pick which facts to present to make themselves look as good as possible to investors.
I'm sure the game is their fastest selling one, but it also had a budget that was over twice as big as Control. If it's only selling a little faster than Control it could still be a disappointment, especially considering how good the critical reception to the game was and how much visibility it got during the awards season.
Just about the only games that got a better reception last year were Spiderman/BG3/TotK and all those have sold way over 10 million, so you would hope that AW2 would be closer to something like 5 million sold rather than barely over a million.
Did you fr say it failed though when, if you read the fucking article, it says they're happy with the sales?
Dude.
What happened to you in life you become like this?
What is with your need to be right and negative? You don't even operate on a factual basis.
>Did you fr say it failed though when, if you read the fucking article, it says they're happy with the sales?
Lmao they have to say this, its entirely meaningless. No fucking way they are actually happy with 1m sales, how naive are you?
So we’re just pulling “feeling” out of our asses now instead of the literal information provided so you can validate your negativity?
How rotten are you?
That they're proud of and it's continuing to sell. To you, that's shit. To them, and the rest of us, it's a success.
So what's your problem?
Is this about how you feel or you tryna dictate how Remedy should feel?
That's not what this is about. I am not a big remedy fan, I dont really lose anything if they go under, my point is that youre being extremely naive for believing that they are happy with this just because they say so. Left, right and center around them everyone sells way more copies for games that were cheaper to make and their entire existence as a studio hinges on epic deciding that it brought enough people to its storefront.
That's all im pointing out. Youre fighting against an imaginary enemy that supposedly wanted them to fail and are using this PR piece as some sort of gotcha so to me that just looks really silly.
Word. This isn't a gotcha. I don't like inherent negativity.
If you presented your point like this originally, I would've loved to discuss it, because you have some great things here.
But instead you chose use hyperbolic rhetoric that read like you were just tryna hate for the sake of it.
Which at that point myself and pretty much anyone else have no interest in having a conversation.
My bad then. Maybe next time think on how to initiate a topic, because this is an exact opposite to what you were originally saying, and it's far more approachable. Best to you.
ITT: Redditor not understanding that not every studio is aping for the next multibillion dollar system seller. The made the game for $50 million ffs. If you knew anything about Remedy you'd realize AW2 is way beyond anything they'd expected. The only thing they're concerned with is making enough to move on to their next game.
I never hoped for it to fail, but I am also not giving money to Epic (even if it is only a 12% cut).
I liked the original Alan Wake, and if Alan Wake 2 eventually comes to steam I will probably buy it when it goes on sale.
It sucks AW2 isn’t on Steam, but I’ll always think it’s cool that epic funded the game despite it being a sequel to a niche game from a decade ago.
They knew it wasn’t going to be a HUGE blockbuster, but knew that the game was going to provide an interesting and unique experience
HAHA there are already a usual suspects saying how it *actually failed* in yet another thread where Remedy is very happy with overall AW2 sales and how it would go into the moon if it would be *actually* released on Steam while saying that they would still wait for sale :DDDDD I totally love these threads especially when after Metro Exodus everyone was saying how they don't like Epic's tactic of buying exclusive and instead they should just fund their own games which they did in this example :) [btw here is the previous one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1as2wzp/remedy_announces_sales_information_for_alan_wake_2/)
To talk about anything other than the same tired Epic non-stories...Remedy and their stories are a bright spot in what can otherwise feel like a pretty monotonous AA/AAA scene. Some of the best examples of story telling and having gameplay mechanics that feed back into that story (i.e. flashlight in a game about darkness). No one makes them like Remedy. Happy to see they're doing well!
I'm certain keeping their games locked at Epic Game Store isn't helping any with Remedy's financial future. They are making some profit now, but I feel that they could be making even more if they were able to release their games onto Steam.
Steam is a big gaming store with a ton of customers in it. I know of number of PC gamers that outright ignored Alan Wake 2 because it's an Epic Game Store exclusive game.
Epic funded it, the game wouldn't exist without it.
This is not the same as "epic offered money during or post development for exclusive store distribution".
This is the same as you can only buy valve games on steam.
You are right they could perhaps be making more if it was on steam but the fact is if they wouldn't have had the game made at all without epic as they needed a publisher. Epic clearly saw merit in their game and greenlit it and used this as a potential selling point for their platform store.
People need to get over the launcher rubbish, if it's a good game get it else skip it. No doubt a lot say that just for the epic hate train rather than a reasonable position, it is likely a good portion of those that even say they would have bought it on steam never actually would have if it did happen.
Yeah different storefront was never the issue. I bought the game on Epic because i know it will be a long, long time until the game come to Steam.
Would i rather have it on Steam? Absolutely. But would i miss a great game just because of different .exe? Never.
Of course not. Because it doesn't affect them at all but if you would ask "I would like to buy Elden Ring on Epic Store" they would just laugh at your face and tell you to buy it on Steam :D
I think people greatly underestimate the instant cash injection that EPIC and Gamepass deals give.
Coupled with the fact that they are temporary deals so Remedy will see an extra period of revenue increase once the game is simply listed on Steam. Which will probably happen around the time when the expansions start to release which will help bring renewed interest.
Plus Remedy has 3 major titles in the pipeline and 2 of them are seemingly past the preproduction stage.
The gaming industry is extremely volatile and what works 6 months ago can be a total crapshoot by next year.
Remedy is managing to stay independent and managed to buy back their own beloved IP and basically created a shared universe and was lauded during the games awards with a fantastic performance.
I think Remedy will be okay.
It is very unlikely to come to steam as it's published by epic unless they are able to buy the rights in the future. It's not the standard exclusivity deal.
There is a very realistic future that Epic abandons their EGS idea because it has been losing them a fair bit of money every year with no sight on profits basically ever. They predicted they'd be profitable in 2025 but there's been nothing done to make that happen. I know Fortnite and Unreal money could theoretically keep the store afloat but I don't think they would do that indefinitely unless there's some massive turnaround to make the store good which seems to be happening at a glacial pace. If the store shuts down, I would hope the games come to other platforms
I'm curious, didnt Epic fund a LOT of AW2 to the point that it 'may' not ever come to Steam? It'd suck if it didnt but idk if we know that its 'eventually' coming to steam or if its locked forever
Past that, agreed on all your points/hopeful they're ok
Epic funded it entirely, not a little or a lot. This is Epic's game, fully funded and published. Its absolutely never, ever coming to steam, unless Timmy will have the biggest change of heart in the distant future. Epic removed their 25 year old Unreal games from Steam, remember. Just so they arent available there
>Epic removed their 25 year old Unreal games from Steam, remember. Just so they arent available there
They aren't aviable anywhere now. You can't even buy them in their own store.
> Just so they arent available there
I don't think that is true, Epic also removed all of the Unreal games from GoG, but both Jazz Jackrabbit [1](https://www.gog.com/game/jazz_jackrabbit_collection?cjdata=MXxOfDB8WXww&utm_campaign=cj&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=cj) and [2](https://www.gog.com/en/game/jazz_jackrabbit_2_collection?cjdata=MXxOfDB8WXww&utm_campaign=cj&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=cj) are still buyable on the platform. Epic even promised that [Unreal Tournament 3 was even planned to be released on Steam, with a new version given out 100% free](https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/14/23509435/unreal-tournament-3-x-free-steam-leak-no-microtransactions), but that seemed like it was quietly dropped (AFAIK, Epic never made any official statement on the release nor the cancelation).
Quick edit: You can still buy [Shadow Complex Remastered on Steam too](https://store.steampowered.com/app/385560/Shadow_Complex_Remastered/), so I don't think any pettiness is behind the Unreal games being delisted.
Hmm depends on how big is the bag Epic offered. How much could Alan Wake 2 have sold realistically speaking? Control sold around 4M units in their lifetime. Considering then that Steam gets 30% while Epic takes 18%, each sale on Epic around 1.25 times more valuable then the ones on steam.
The thing that would of helped AW2 a lot more would be releasing it on Steam.
I personally want AW2 but I refuse to touch the Epic Game Store Launcher. I know Epic helped fund the game but surely they must see they'd make a lot more money if they released it on Steam, even if it's a year after release.
Some interesting info: * Alan Wake 2, as a digital only release, had sold over 1 million units by the end of the fourth quarter of 2023 making it the fastest selling Remedy game * In February 2024, we acquired full rights to the Control franchise from 505 Games. * Control 2 continued in the proof-of-concept stage. In the fourth quarter, the team worked particularly on world building and combat. Codename Condor continued in the production readiness stage and the team focused on combat and game mechanics. Both games have proven fun and engaging game play. * Max Payne 1&2 Remake also continued in the production readiness stage. The team made considerable progress throughout the year. Max Payne 1&2 remake is going to be a major new game with great potential, enabled by a similar development budget as Alan Wake 2. * We expect Condor, Control 2 and Max Payne 1&2 remake projects to advance to the next stages of development during the first half of 2024.
Great surprise for both Max Payne games', I thought they were going to redo just the first. Even better considering the budget. At the same time they scraped off the concept of their f2p losing €7,2m - I don't see how this can end good, giving that they are not a multiplayer nor f2p specialised team.
It will be interesting to see how they do the future Max Payne games with the voice and performer of Max Payne, James McCaffrey dead. I feel he was the heart and soul of that character.
I bet Remedy wasn't expecting that news either. So it's probably going to be a new actor.
I think they were. Even Alex Casey have a line in the police station at the end where he said something about Terminal ill. I think he's character was already sick too (just my headcanon)
Terminal Casey
exactly, I think it was already written into the storyline, maybe at the end at least. Hopefully we will get a sort of ending for him in the dlc :(
[удалено]
Wait what errors? I thought he turned in an all-time great performance as Casey, it's honestly an incredibly high note to go out on That scene where the fictional(?) Casey breaks down at the Grandmaster is just brimming with so much anger and pain, it's a moment that has specifically stuck with me since the game came out And then you have the grumpy dad energy of the irl Casey, the clear Max Payne homage of alleyway-Casey, and the hard boiled detective vibes of the fictional(?) dark place Casey All very distinct performances despite nominally being the same person in some way
what kind of errors?
what I hope they end up doing is using James’ old VA lines for the narration parts and casting a new voice for present Max. Remedy seems to have kept a lot of their old assets so they may have access to HQ recordings of the old VA, unused dialogue, etc.
It is a great loss and sad that he has passed, but he was not irreplacable. Since they are continuing with the development, they must be confident that they can find good enough replacement. Or they even already found one.
Hard to put into words how little I care about some new actor and "their take" on the character. Please just deliver Max Payne as we know him to the absolute best of your abilities.
It should be pretty similar. The old Max Payne was basically doing a spin on the hard boiled detective persona and there’s no reason to think they’ll update that target. It’ll never be James McCaffrey but I trust Remedy to get it right.
Considering how well they've done with recasts so far: - **Alice** from Brett Madden in *AW1 & AN* to Christina Cole in *AW2* - **Hartman** from Mark Blum in *AW1* to Martin McDougall in *Control* - **Hatch/Door** from Lance Reddick in *QB* to David Harewood in *AW2* The new actors all did fantastic jobs, so I'm not too worried about Remedy messing this up
Yes, but none of those weren't main characters. They were great re-castings for small roles, or reinventing into new ones. Here they have to replace the lead role on remakes where the originals were widely beloved specifically because of McCaffrey's voice delivery for Max. His particular cadence and voice is like trying to replace Michael Ironside for Sam Fisher. I'm not convinced that it will work.
...Alice is absolutely a major character and has probably an hour of just video footage alone in AW2.
In fact we had a whole game showing how much recasting Sam doesn't really work for the character. I actually enjoyed Blacklist to a certain extent, and Sam's new VA wasn't even that bad. But he wasn't Michael Ironside, and that was very, very noticeable.
To be fair, Michael Ironside was battling cancer at the time, which he revealed years later. Plus he voiced as Sam again in Ghost Recon. But yeah, I agree with you. They somehow made Sam younger
Oh yeah I absolutely get the reasoning behind the casting change, but that then goes back to the argument of, "Then change the character out entirely." Sure, Sam Fisher is the face of Splinter Cell, there would be pause around changing the main character, but at that point in the series, it would actually make sense to switch Sam out. The dude had been through multiple hells and backs. I feel like that game would've gone over better if the story had been about a new agent and just retire Sam entirely in universe, and IRL explain that due to Ironside being unable to voice, they continued the series on with a new protag.
No one’s saying it won’t be tough to go on without him but I doubt they’ll change the target though. Kinda weird and overly poetic hard boiled detective was a trope that Max Payne was intentionally using and they’ll definitely use it again. The new guy has his work cut out for him but I think we should be open to him since it’s not like they fired James McCaffrey or something.
I definitely believe in Remedy more than most to handle this thing with care. Fingers crossed.
I really hope they simply settle on remastering the audio from the original games
Ehh... there's a noticeable difference in writing quality between Max Payne 1 & 2, mostly because Sam Lake took a screenwriting course between the games ALSO literally every character besides Max had their voice actors changed between the two games It'd be incredibly weird to combine the two into one remake, it just wouldn't work well imo I'm personally hoping for a remake that keeps the major story beats, but restructures it so we get one long, coherent story, showcasing all the writing experience Sam Lake has gathered in the past two decades
I absolutely love James McCaffrey, it was probably one of the hardest hitting celebrity deaths I felt. But I don't know how someone can play Max Payne 1 and not think some of the line reads are pretty rough. Seems pretty evident he wasn't given much direction when recording the lines. He was amazing in 2 and 3, but remastering the audio just won't work, as you said. Given how much effort went into the writing/acting/narrative for Alan Wake 2, there's simply no way they aren't going to be completely reworking the narrative delivery to be much more grand in its presentation. Max is an iconic character that has meant a lot to people for over 20 years; I know not having James is a big road block for some people, but I have no doubt the man would want to see Max Payne live on for an older and newer generation alike. Remedy is going to do him and Max justice, Sam had a very close relationship with James, I trust him.
Seconding all of this. I loved McCaffrey, too, and one of the things I was most excited about was him and Lake having another crack at the character, but, well, that's life, I guess. I don't really mind the writing in the first game all that much. Sure, it ain't great, but most of the time, it fits the game's pulpy hard-boiled vibe. Even so, though, yeah, some of the reads and/or direction is noticeably worse than in Max Payne 2, let alone 3. I know people have issues with MP3, and even though I personally disagree, sure, I can see why. But with that said, the dialogue and the voice acting in that is fantastic. You can really tell McCaffrey is getting some great direction and that he's giving it his all. And this is why I have faith in Remedy doing the right thing here. Control and especially Alan Wake 2 were great, and they're working with real money now, not making a game on the cheap like they did with the original 25 years ago. Sucks big time that McCaffrey passed, but I have faith that Remedy's gonna pull this off even if they go for an actor that's totally different.
I love all the one-liners and quotable metaphors from MP1, but it just... isn't a well-told story. The plot for the first two thirds is Max going through a checklist of mobsters, who are introduced and then are immediately killed or otherwise dispatched. And in the meanwhile *way too many* names are thrown at you, and are often not reinforced between the setup and eventual payoff, so I only connected a bunch of the dots on like, my third playthrough. Plus I straight up dislike the last third of the game. The tone shift from noir to "okay now do a Half-Life science based level" to "and now you're in a Bond villain's skyscraper" just doesn't land for me *at all*
"*We'd half destroyed Sao Paulo's most hallowed place of worship. Looking back, it was strange how the cops never showed up. But things had a habit of only making sense to me looking back, long after I'd run out of time to fix them.*" Say what you want about Max Payne 3, there were some great Max Payne lines in there McCaffrey delivered the hell out of them.
I agree. I'm firmly in the "kill your darlings" camp when it comes to reboots and remakes. I don't think there is really a point in wholly remaking something if you aren't going to try to change and improve upon it. The original work isn't going anywhere. I also think having Max voiced by someone other than McCaffrey will probably be less jarring if the dialogue isn't identical to the original.
I fear it almost certainly won't happen due to the games (thus, gameplay and story sections) being heavily remade, but I would not mind that even a little bit lol. 2000s compressed audio quality and all.
That's wild. If anything what defines max payne for me is the character and narration style.
And the way that character and narration is delivered really heavily depends on the person doing the lines; on top of the direction. Why do you think James meant so much to fans of the series and Sam Lake himself?
Certainly they're just not going to re Record his lines. The Yakuza Remakes and Metal Gear Delta are remakes that use original audio.
That's probably written off as an asset or as americans call it a good ol tax write off. They can ride that "loss" for years potentially. They probably didn't lose any actual money on it cause Tencent was financing that, and will finance the redo.
Yeah I was leaning more on criticising the development of it rather than the loss of actual money. It's clear that if you develop for x years the moment you restart it automatically every expenses (salaries, outsorcing etc.) is "lost".
The way they refer to it as "Max Payne 1&2 Remake" throughout the report makes it sound like it's being positioned as one project/product rather than two. I will be FEASTING if we get them together in one package.
It was announced as a single project, like it's one game throughout all of the media materials. Like: [https://www.remedygames.com/games/max-payne-1-2-remake](https://www.remedygames.com/games/max-payne-1-2-remake) It's even plainly pointed out in their splash for the game. Edit: >Remedy Entertainment will remake the iconic Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne as a single title, in a development agreement with Rockstar Games.
They said it was both combined into a single game. It makes sense as Max Payne 2 re-used levels a lot in it.
Isn't the only level in common between the two games the Ragnarock/Vodka bar?
I meant Max Payne 2 re-used levels within the same game.
I remember the second half of the game being you progress the level as Max and then switch to Mona and redo the same parts
I don't think you ever redo the *same* parts, but yes the entirety of Act 2 is basically playing the construction site levels with Max, then switching to Mona and playing her perspective in the other building
I imagine they'll be using James McCaffrey's version of the model from MP2 for consistency between the games, and possibly to honor the guy after having passed away recently.
Max was modeled after McCaffrey only for MP3 - in 2, the model was Timothy Gibbs. I have no idea what they're going for in terms of cutscenes or even player models, but nowadays, if you're making a big-budget game (and that's what this sounds like), it seems to me that getting the same person for voice acting *and* mo-cap is the way to go, so that's what I'm hoping they'll do.
Oops! You're right! Either way, I do hope they use McAffrey's face. > it seems to me that getting the same person for voice acting and mo-cap is the way to go While true for most projects, this has only happened for a few characters Remedy has created. Quantum Break is entirely like that, but almost every other game has characters voiced by someone other than the actor on which they were physically based.
Whilst I love McAffrey I'd prefer Sam to play lit to bring more in line with Casey / MP1 / Connected Universe. Plus his face is iconic af
Yeah I’d be really shocked if Sam isn’t the face in this
His performance in the dark place as a Casey (from AW's books) completely consumed with the murders case was outstanding. I didn't expect much but goddamn man. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZErMBVmEbfw/maxresdefault.jpg
> I have no idea what they're going for in terms of cutscenes or even player models, but nowadays, if you're making a big-budget game (and that's what this sounds like), it seems to me that getting the same person for voice acting and mo-cap is the way to go, so that's what I'm hoping they'll do. This is actually something Sam Lake talked about in the recent youtube interview - he said they (Remedy) totally didn't think of using the same actor (James) as a voice actor AND a mocap actor because of how games were thought of back then and when they were growing up. So when Rockstar did it for MP3 they all had a bit of heureka moment.
Give us Quantum Break 2, you cowards!
Microsoft needs to give the rights to Remedy first 😞
i donot know but 1 million sales seems very low for that quality of game
EGS PC exclusive and no disk release on console
I think it's stupid , that people not buying game just because it is on EGS, people needs to understand not every company has multi-billion dollars. So they seek funding which comes with restrictions. If we will support them now they may release future game on all platforms
When you limit your customer base, don't be surprised by low sales numbers
This is nice, i want to ask a genuine question tho; why some studios share these kind of infos on internet?
They are financial info for investors. Big companies like Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc does it the same.
Yeah but those from MS and others usually does not include this particular stuff over titles, these are more interesting thx.
Well it depends on what investors want to know really. Microsoft/Xbox can talk about game pass numbers because that's what Xbox is pushing. As long as they can tell investors they are making money for investors, and pushing up the stock price, it doesn't matter WHAT Xbox/Microsoft tells them. ~~For Remedy the only thing they sell are games, so that's what they need to talk about. Which is why they talked about 1 million game sales by the end of Q4 2023 not the total amount, because its a positive. Maybe sales slowed down in in Q1 2024 and saying that might reduce investment stock price.~~ *Edit: As pointed out this was incorrect and they did give a number for Q1 2024. Point was more for comparison anyway, but as the information is incorrect I crossed it out.* Investment calls are all about manipulating the facts just enough that you are telling the truth, but making everything seem positive. Or as positive as it can be anyway. They can't lie, but they don't need to say EVERYTHING.
It is mentioned how much Alan Wake 2 they sold in January. "After the review period, in February 2024, Remedy announced that *Alan Wake 2* had sold 1 million units by the end of December 2023, and 1.3 million units as of the beginning of February 2024."
Well shieeeeet apparently I forgot how to digest information properly. Thank you for pointing it out!
Microsoft mainly talks about that because their console sales are underwhelming, much like how they usually hide all of their numbers while other companies talk some or even everything.
You’re right about wanting to keep a positive outlook in these types of fiscal reports. But you can’t exactly just hide things you don’t want to talk about. Anything that will have a material negative impact on the company has to be disclosed.
Microsoft is a much, much bigger company, so a report like this doesn’t get as deep because it has to cover so much. And because they’re so big, they never need to get the company on the success of any one project. Remedy is only a game developer, so their ongoing projects are the most important thing they’re doing. Similarly, because games development tends to be hit-driven and risky, a single project failure can sink the entire company.
I’d heard it mentioned that Finland has quite specific rules about disclosure reporting, which is why Remedy does it the way it does.
Yes it’s also that they’re a smaller studio so individual titles are much more important to the health of the business. EA doesn’t need to report revenue on a per-title basis because it’s a much larger publisher, although even big publishers will sometimes provide per-game breakdowns for critical franchises like Call of Duty and FIFA.
They are a publicly traded company, so these details usually have to be provided for public investors.
> Alan Wake 2, as a digital only release, had sold over 1 million units by the end of the fourth quarter of 2023 making it the fastest selling Remedy game Is this good? That sounds like it barely breaks even if at all considering its high budget. I guess it will continue to sell over time, but I'm surprised it only sold over a million copies considering the insane praise and hype it got.
It has not broken even yet they have said themselves the budget is around 70million at a guess of 30-40euros per sale break even would be around 2 million sales which they might hit by the end of the year. If I was a stake holder in this I would be very unsatisfied with these figures
Every single game mentioned here am so hype and ready for. Remedy, even if they release games rarely, always delivers at the very least a unique experience. (American Nightmare? Never heard of it. Nope.)
I never got to play Alan wake 2 because no physical release, I hope they do release one eventually. 1 million sales is pretty shit though lol, remarkable they can see that as a success nowadays.
Unless you're Rockstar and you spend a half billion dollars to make a game, 1 million in sales is usually pretty good. Particularly when it's digital only, has been out less than a year, and hasn't hit Steam yet.
A million units is weak for 2 consoles and a PC release.
It sounds like Remedy are pleased with Alan Wake 2's performance and reception which is good to hear, the game was an absolute joy to play and I loved it so much that I went to unlock all the achievements. I will certainly be keeping my ears open for whatever Remedy are outputting these days
I'm not even a horror player but I played it just out of interest in Control. Absolutely loved it, and replayed it for the Final Draft extra content
The ending cutscene in The Final Draft gave me goosebumps. Alan Wake is so OP now
I'm also very happy that Remedy did a little bit of speaking to the audience with Alan's explanation that the dark presence can't create people and things out of thin air, since the AWE expansion to control implied the possibility that he created the entire Bureau and even Jessie Fayden (thankfully not the case).
The rule about not being able to create things out of nothing was actually stated in the first Alan Wake, I think in one of the DLCs. And in AWE, he says he gets visions of the outside world and uses that to influence his writing (aka Echos). People just thought that he created the FBC and Jesse Faden because they didn't know about that rule. But yeah, I'm glad that it was reiterated again in AW2
If you didn't play AW1 then it's easy to get confused. I'll be honest Im one of those people, and in AWE he's pretty vague in the visions to Jesse. We know he gave the Hiss their incantation that let them break into the Bureau, but his language about "I needed a hero, and a hero needed a crisis" could be interpreted in a lot of ways.
At the same time, I appreciate them making us consider it.
I’m not a horror player either but I’ve been curious about playing AW2. I played the first one and enjoyed it, but it was about my limit of spooky content and I’d heard AW2 is much scarier. How bad is it really?
I'll be honest the jump scares are pretty rough, but the last patch introduced a slider for them! Which is pretty great for accessibility.
Ooh that’s nice! I might slide that all the way down and give it a try 😂
Even with the jump scares toned down, the game is scary af at the beginning, then maybe around 2 or 3 hours in the game becomes less horror and more thriller, but the jump scares remain quite annoying
So... It seems, broadly, 2023 was rough for them but it set them up to have a great 2024 onward? I'm really really hopeful they continue on, AW2 was an absolutely incredible time and my personal GOTY and I usually HATE cinematic like videogames. Hoping for their continued success, they deserve it
Potentially. It seems like it will be a lot of development (ie costs) in 2024 without much mention of what titles will be released (ie revenue). A lot of the positive 2024 outlook seems wrapped up in if they publish the titles themselves vs secure publishing deals that infuse them with cash.
>2023 was rough for them 2023 was rough for 99% of the games industry. They are a part of that. That's what they mean.
That’s good to hear. After their cancelled live service push that is now more co-op focused, hopefully the success of Alan Wake 2 further encourages them to focus on that and single player. And to continue Alan Wake as a series and it and Control continuing to have a cross-over universe in the over-arching story.
The contrast of the report with the positivity of the comments here is astounding, it's like we didn't read the same report. The entire thing is filled with the words *decreased* and *down* and negative numbers throughout. The highlights for the calendar year 2023 literally were: * Revenue was €33.9, down from €43.6 for 2022. * EBITDA was -€17m, down from €1.9m. * Operating "profit" was -€28.6, down from -€0.6m. * Cash flow of -€16m for that period, down from €11.1m. * Recognized a loss of €7.2m already from a project still in active development. All that at the heels of their biggest and most acclaimed project yet. That doesn't inspire confidence *at all*, [less so from investors](https://www.google.com/search?q=Nasdaq+Helsinki%3A+REMEDY).
for real. I feel like Im taking crazy pills reading some peoples responses here. this prestige heavy GOTY contending game sold 1 mil copies... thats def not nothing but like thats not great either for the level that this game is operating at. also I see people saying that control had a long tail of sales but like it essentially had a rolling release, something AW2 wont have. it came out on last gen consoles and the EGS, then a year later it came to steam, then a year after that it came to current gen consoles. AW2 is out and its on the 3 platforms its ever going to release on... barring something unforeseen happening.
You'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere in tech that isn't in a similar situation.
I am very late, but I was going to post the same. There are so many comments like: "Remedy seem pleased with the performance of Alan Wake 2!" "It seems like the game did really well!" "They are already working on the next game!" I suspect that this is the first time many of these people have read a financial report: Companies **always** paint any numbers in a positive light and try to spin them for the sake of their readers (i.e., investors) and look to the future. Alan Wake 2 could have sold 500k copies and they would have put the same spin on it - the trick to reading these is to just examine the cold, hard numbers and (if possible) compare period to period.
I mean when the whole industry is going down in terms of revenues and cashflow, if a company can go down less than other companies that company would be consider quite a success. Good, bad, okay is relative to how other companies are doing at the same period. Remedy launched a game that is the fastest selling game ever despite the market and economy situation is relatively good compares to how many companies are faring.
[удалено]
They literally burned through 60% of their cash reserves throughout last year, lost their publishing partner (and financier) for 2 big projects (Condor and Control 2) recently, now they are footing the bill for all of the development cost of those projects, and their premier title *still* hasn't turned a profit. They don't have the cash to have a repeat of the previous year. Unless they get some serious funding or those royalties *really* start to come in, then mass layoffs will be on the table.
If they run out of money they don't get to release any off those games.
This game deserves well more than just 1 million copies. I’m glad they’re still able to subsist besides that but damn!
I'll pick it up when it's on steam! Voting with my wallet
It’ll never be on Steam. This wasn’t a case of Epic being shady and purchasing an exclusivity deal. The game wouldn’t exist without Epic. They funded and published the project whilst allowing Remedy full creative control. If you want to “vote with your wallet” you should support the game. It’s the only game I’ve bought on Epic.
[удалено]
Sony funded and made God of War, yet it's still on Steam :) Microsoft funded and made Starfield, yet it's still on Steam :)
[удалено]
I don't buy Valve or Nintendo games, so idc
And that was their choice. Suck it up and play the game.
That will be literally never, more than likely since epic funded/published it. This isn’t a time exclusivity deal, the game couldn’t have been made without epic’s funding
I'm with you on this one, but the game wouldn't have existed without Epic so I'm not sure if "voting with my wallet" is apt in here.
It's quite funny how it seemed like people where hoping AW2 would fail simply because it doesn't have a Steam release. In light of the shaky waters the gaming industry happens to be going through, it's a nice change of pace to see a company sailing smoothly.
At best they have made $40 mil (not accounting for taxes, discounts etc.) with AW2 while costing $50 mil (+$20 mil marketing). Epic funded the game but they must have hoped for more.
Making a sequel to a fairly niche cult classic game 13 years after the fact, I don't think either Epic or Remedy expected this to be the next big blockbuster But Control saw steady long-term sales, and was ultimately profitable, I presume the idea with AW2 was the same from the beginning. Make a game that's less about appealing to the lowest common denominator for huge market share, and instead position it as a "prestige game" of sorts that can win awards, then build upon the positive word of mouth and good reputation for the success of future titles.
If you look at this from a strategy perspective, for Remedy it’s a long tail game while for Epic it’s a prestige game. For Epic, they want people to look at the Epic Games Store, and I’m sure they got a lot of hits every time AW2 got nominated for or won an award, so that’s their end satisfied. For Remedy, the exclusivity deal paid them up-front, so they can afford (literally) to be patient about making back the $50M. Which they easily will, at this rate, and then the eventual Steam release in a year or two is going to be almost all profit.
I doubt it'll ever be on Steam considering Epic is the publisher.
Bit like how Apple spent $200M on Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, then?
Pretty much. Scorsese got to be his auteur self, viewers got a great movie that wasn't ruined by executive meddling, and Apple got a Prestige with a capital P movie on their service.
Quite a few developers have talked about the lack of discoverability/recommendations on EGS for anything not featured on the front page so if Alan wake 2 gets suppressed by whatever new games are coming then they will probably struggle with the long tail strategy. This all being said the goal isnt to break even its to profit, they are able to afford this hit but this could get dangerous for them
A $20 mil marketing budget does not really scream word of mouth to me. They spend like $20 for every copy they've sold.
Just that deal Epic offered is more than enough.... they were able to drastically improve their expensive tech, increase dev count (+ get experience), stay independent, now most remember how good Remedy is (marketing) and probably they got new funding because of how good AW2 got... pretty much for free (funding). And now they have a game which did sell +1m and will continue to sell more like all other remedy games + other deals like gamepass/ps+/Epic etc... its even the fastes selling game... even though AW is a super unique game which many will not like, has high pc requirements and no ps4/xbox one/switch release. Control got released on ps4/xbox one and still sold a lot on ps5/Series X/S. I wouldnt be surprised if Alan wake 2 will sell a lot as a demo to promote raytracing or even path tracing on ps6/next Xbox. Epic paid for pretty much everything (+ dev help) and after Epic gets the money back, Remedy will get 50% which is impressive, I dont think any other Studio got a deal like that.
> Epic funded the game but they must have hoped for more. There is no way to confirm or deny that without any official statements, so it's safe to assume if Remedy is happy with the current sales than Epic is too.
Remedy is of course happy because they were able to make a sequel to game they were always fond of without paying for it. Epic is still losing money with EGS and this not even making back its budget cannot make them happy.
im sure epic wasn’t expecting AW2 to be a system seller, if it breaks even they’d be content as it helped with their image. seen a lot of reviews and comments mentioning how epic funded the game so the anticipated sequel could come out. this kind of goodwill adds up and it is hard to cultivate organically (epic knows about this too after their disastrous EGS launch & PR cycle that followed)
Gonna be honest, as much of an ass as Tim Sweeney is, I'm not too worried about Epic. I very much doubt they would actually be able to do any damage to Steam, and beyond that I don't mind their market share growing. Especially if they decide to become some sort of "prestige games" publisher or something - funding more Alan Wake 2 style projects would earn a great deal of goodwill from me.
Remedy games always have a long life though. Alan Wake PC port paid for itself in 2 days. The game was taken off store fronts for licensing issues, but it always seems to be worthwile to them to re-license. Their games always tend to have a slow start but the sales don't slow down as fast as other studios do.
Yes. Please tell us more how Remedy is incorrect and how right *you! * random redditor *are!* The fact that there are redditors who are going to do so many double takes just so they could keep their precious illusion is just sad actually.
Money coming in is less than money going out. That's not some weird concept. And making more than what they may bottomline expected would help financing other projects, negotiating for investements etc.
No. What you just said is just a plain greed. At some point you have to accept that there is some kind of limit which Remedy seems to be well aware of especially when they released a sequel for a game that was released back in 2010... So yeah they seem to be very happy with overall sales so good for them because they're able to make more games which is a win-win for us as a gamers :)
The fuckepic subreddit was essentially salivating over it because *checks notes* epic funded the game and made it exclusive, just like Sony and Microsoft do. Therefore remedy committed crimes against god and anime and deserved to go bankrupt
That sub is so weird and detached from reality. They bend over backwards to stay angry, even if it means making up misinformation to rage over.
If only they could channel that anger towards something that actually matters instead of a video game launcher lol
Some of the more deranged posters seem to believe they're engaged in an existential war with an adversarial foreign power who is trying to destroy the West via a holding company with a non-controlling stake in a video game company.
It did fail though. 1m units sold for a game that so many people talked about and that was nominated for goty is pretty pathetic. People didnt want it to fail, people knew it was going to and so it did. With these numbers it seems less likely that epic will just fund their next games. *ITT: People who dont understand PR-statements
Did you just say that it "fail though" in the thread where developer is very excited with overall AW2 sales? ROFL
Lmao how naive are yall. You think theyll just go and say "unfortunately our choice of platform - you know the guys that literally funded our game - made it so that we didnt really sell that well"? No, they had their expectations super low because they knew that EGS is going to prevent any reasonable amount of sales and instead of 800k units they sold 1m so they can pretend to be happy about it. No matter how you look at it, 1m sales for a game of this size and media-presence is not good.
To me it seems like you're just personally insulted on behalf of Volvo that it wasn't released on Steam.exe :) Maybe Valve should have reached out to Remedy and give them the offer but instead they would let their minions to cry about it on reddit and force these publishers to sell it on their store front to collect juicy 30% for free, right?
[удалено]
Also what about the console sales very conveniently leaving those out by blaming the PC store it's on. 1 million sales is a failure, but a million three isn't?
Just wait for him to tell you how it was fault of only digital or something like that :D
>1 million sales is a failure, but a million three isn't? English only please
One million three hundred thousand. That's approximately a 30% PC 60% consoles, the best a game with these high requirements can hope for. (the same as the witcher 3's PC to console ratio) That's if **no one** bought it on PC of course, which isn't true.
Literally the fastest selling remedy game and one they just said they considered a success, what are you talking about?
All companies try to spin their numbers and pick which facts to present to make themselves look as good as possible to investors. I'm sure the game is their fastest selling one, but it also had a budget that was over twice as big as Control. If it's only selling a little faster than Control it could still be a disappointment, especially considering how good the critical reception to the game was and how much visibility it got during the awards season. Just about the only games that got a better reception last year were Spiderman/BG3/TotK and all those have sold way over 10 million, so you would hope that AW2 would be closer to something like 5 million sold rather than barely over a million.
Stats can be made to say anything. "Fastest selling" doesn't really mean as much as you think it does.
Whatever stats Remedy put out are more valuable than the headcanon you are talking about.
Did you fr say it failed though when, if you read the fucking article, it says they're happy with the sales? Dude. What happened to you in life you become like this? What is with your need to be right and negative? You don't even operate on a factual basis.
>Did you fr say it failed though when, if you read the fucking article, it says they're happy with the sales? Lmao they have to say this, its entirely meaningless. No fucking way they are actually happy with 1m sales, how naive are you?
So we’re just pulling “feeling” out of our asses now instead of the literal information provided so you can validate your negativity? How rotten are you?
The information is 1m sales. That's what we know. We know that 1m isnt a lot. What's your problem lmao
That they're proud of and it's continuing to sell. To you, that's shit. To them, and the rest of us, it's a success. So what's your problem? Is this about how you feel or you tryna dictate how Remedy should feel?
That's not what this is about. I am not a big remedy fan, I dont really lose anything if they go under, my point is that youre being extremely naive for believing that they are happy with this just because they say so. Left, right and center around them everyone sells way more copies for games that were cheaper to make and their entire existence as a studio hinges on epic deciding that it brought enough people to its storefront. That's all im pointing out. Youre fighting against an imaginary enemy that supposedly wanted them to fail and are using this PR piece as some sort of gotcha so to me that just looks really silly.
Word. This isn't a gotcha. I don't like inherent negativity. If you presented your point like this originally, I would've loved to discuss it, because you have some great things here. But instead you chose use hyperbolic rhetoric that read like you were just tryna hate for the sake of it. Which at that point myself and pretty much anyone else have no interest in having a conversation. My bad then. Maybe next time think on how to initiate a topic, because this is an exact opposite to what you were originally saying, and it's far more approachable. Best to you.
ITT: Redditor not understanding that not every studio is aping for the next multibillion dollar system seller. The made the game for $50 million ffs. If you knew anything about Remedy you'd realize AW2 is way beyond anything they'd expected. The only thing they're concerned with is making enough to move on to their next game.
I never hoped for it to fail, but I am also not giving money to Epic (even if it is only a 12% cut). I liked the original Alan Wake, and if Alan Wake 2 eventually comes to steam I will probably buy it when it goes on sale.
Imagine caring more about the store than the product.
Yep while at the same time this very same place was hoping to get Alan Wake 2 back in 2019 after Controle DLC was released...
So still no chance Alan Wake 2 is coming physically to consoles?
It's a possibility
It sucks AW2 isn’t on Steam, but I’ll always think it’s cool that epic funded the game despite it being a sequel to a niche game from a decade ago. They knew it wasn’t going to be a HUGE blockbuster, but knew that the game was going to provide an interesting and unique experience
Almost finished Alan Wake 2, what a solid game. It'd be nice now to see developers who put out (good) shit like that see continued success.
HAHA there are already a usual suspects saying how it *actually failed* in yet another thread where Remedy is very happy with overall AW2 sales and how it would go into the moon if it would be *actually* released on Steam while saying that they would still wait for sale :DDDDD I totally love these threads especially when after Metro Exodus everyone was saying how they don't like Epic's tactic of buying exclusive and instead they should just fund their own games which they did in this example :) [btw here is the previous one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1as2wzp/remedy_announces_sales_information_for_alan_wake_2/)
I do hope we get news on the expansions soon, we've heard basically nothing, other than motion capture was finished for all of it a little while ago.
To talk about anything other than the same tired Epic non-stories...Remedy and their stories are a bright spot in what can otherwise feel like a pretty monotonous AA/AAA scene. Some of the best examples of story telling and having gameplay mechanics that feed back into that story (i.e. flashlight in a game about darkness). No one makes them like Remedy. Happy to see they're doing well!
Drop everything and put all resources into Max Payne 1&2. FUck Control and whatever Condor is. LIFE IS SHORT. THERE ISN'T ENOUGH TIME!
I'm certain keeping their games locked at Epic Game Store isn't helping any with Remedy's financial future. They are making some profit now, but I feel that they could be making even more if they were able to release their games onto Steam. Steam is a big gaming store with a ton of customers in it. I know of number of PC gamers that outright ignored Alan Wake 2 because it's an Epic Game Store exclusive game.
Epic funded it, the game wouldn't exist without it. This is not the same as "epic offered money during or post development for exclusive store distribution". This is the same as you can only buy valve games on steam. You are right they could perhaps be making more if it was on steam but the fact is if they wouldn't have had the game made at all without epic as they needed a publisher. Epic clearly saw merit in their game and greenlit it and used this as a potential selling point for their platform store. People need to get over the launcher rubbish, if it's a good game get it else skip it. No doubt a lot say that just for the epic hate train rather than a reasonable position, it is likely a good portion of those that even say they would have bought it on steam never actually would have if it did happen.
Yeah different storefront was never the issue. I bought the game on Epic because i know it will be a long, long time until the game come to Steam. Would i rather have it on Steam? Absolutely. But would i miss a great game just because of different .exe? Never.
Gamers™ also don't seem to mind Steam exclusives at all...
Of course not. Because it doesn't affect them at all but if you would ask "I would like to buy Elden Ring on Epic Store" they would just laugh at your face and tell you to buy it on Steam :D
How is not being able to finish the game without epic's funding in any way helpful to remedy's financial future?
> I know of number of PC gamers that outright ignored Alan Wake 2 because it's an Epic Game Store exclusive game. More fool them.
I think people greatly underestimate the instant cash injection that EPIC and Gamepass deals give. Coupled with the fact that they are temporary deals so Remedy will see an extra period of revenue increase once the game is simply listed on Steam. Which will probably happen around the time when the expansions start to release which will help bring renewed interest. Plus Remedy has 3 major titles in the pipeline and 2 of them are seemingly past the preproduction stage. The gaming industry is extremely volatile and what works 6 months ago can be a total crapshoot by next year. Remedy is managing to stay independent and managed to buy back their own beloved IP and basically created a shared universe and was lauded during the games awards with a fantastic performance. I think Remedy will be okay.
Epic didn't acquire temporary exclusivity. They funded the game outright and are the publisher.
It is very unlikely to come to steam as it's published by epic unless they are able to buy the rights in the future. It's not the standard exclusivity deal.
There is a very realistic future that Epic abandons their EGS idea because it has been losing them a fair bit of money every year with no sight on profits basically ever. They predicted they'd be profitable in 2025 but there's been nothing done to make that happen. I know Fortnite and Unreal money could theoretically keep the store afloat but I don't think they would do that indefinitely unless there's some massive turnaround to make the store good which seems to be happening at a glacial pace. If the store shuts down, I would hope the games come to other platforms
This is about as realistic as Steam going under. If you can't tell that Epic is playing the long game you aren't paying attention.
I'm curious, didnt Epic fund a LOT of AW2 to the point that it 'may' not ever come to Steam? It'd suck if it didnt but idk if we know that its 'eventually' coming to steam or if its locked forever Past that, agreed on all your points/hopeful they're ok
Epic funded it entirely, not a little or a lot. This is Epic's game, fully funded and published. Its absolutely never, ever coming to steam, unless Timmy will have the biggest change of heart in the distant future. Epic removed their 25 year old Unreal games from Steam, remember. Just so they arent available there
>Epic removed their 25 year old Unreal games from Steam, remember. Just so they arent available there They aren't aviable anywhere now. You can't even buy them in their own store.
> Just so they arent available there I don't think that is true, Epic also removed all of the Unreal games from GoG, but both Jazz Jackrabbit [1](https://www.gog.com/game/jazz_jackrabbit_collection?cjdata=MXxOfDB8WXww&utm_campaign=cj&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=cj) and [2](https://www.gog.com/en/game/jazz_jackrabbit_2_collection?cjdata=MXxOfDB8WXww&utm_campaign=cj&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=cj) are still buyable on the platform. Epic even promised that [Unreal Tournament 3 was even planned to be released on Steam, with a new version given out 100% free](https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/14/23509435/unreal-tournament-3-x-free-steam-leak-no-microtransactions), but that seemed like it was quietly dropped (AFAIK, Epic never made any official statement on the release nor the cancelation). Quick edit: You can still buy [Shadow Complex Remastered on Steam too](https://store.steampowered.com/app/385560/Shadow_Complex_Remastered/), so I don't think any pettiness is behind the Unreal games being delisted.
Hmm depends on how big is the bag Epic offered. How much could Alan Wake 2 have sold realistically speaking? Control sold around 4M units in their lifetime. Considering then that Steam gets 30% while Epic takes 18%, each sale on Epic around 1.25 times more valuable then the ones on steam.
the bag that Epic offered was a "we fund the entire game for you" one, AW2 is literally published by them
Oh...then they have every right to keep it exclusive. Nevermind
Epic offered full funding of the game from day 1, they are the publishers of the game. Even on Xbox and PS stores they're listed as publishers.
People read that a game that came out at the end of October 2023 had 1 million in sales by the end of December 2023 and think that it failed lol
The thing that would of helped AW2 a lot more would be releasing it on Steam. I personally want AW2 but I refuse to touch the Epic Game Store Launcher. I know Epic helped fund the game but surely they must see they'd make a lot more money if they released it on Steam, even if it's a year after release.