Remedy signs deal with Epic for two next-gen games

Control studio Remedy Entertainment has signed publishing agreements with Epic Games for the company’s next two unannounced games.

Epic Games Publishing was announced on Thursday and claimed to have “the most developer-friendly terms in the industry.”

Remedy’s Sam Lake said of the deal: “Epic understands what it takes to make a big game. They want to give us full creative freedom.”

The first Remedy project in the deal is a “AAA multi-platform game” already in pre-production, the company said, while the second is a “smaller-scale” project set in the same franchise. Both projects are being developed on Remedy’s proprietary Northlight game engine and tools.

The games will be released for next-gen consoles and PC in “the next few years,” Remedy said. The Finnish studio will retain ownership of the unannounced games’ IP, while revenue will be split with Epic.

Remedy previously signed a deal to sell Control exclusively via the Epic Games Store on PC. Epic reportedly paid around $10 million.

In its latest earnings results released in February, Remedy said that work on its unannounced game project was “proceeding well” under a team of around 20 people.

It’s unlikely that the “smaller-scale” project referenced in today’s announcement is Codename Vanguard, the service-based multiplayer game it’s working on with around 15 people, since that is not being powered by its Northlight engine.

Remedy previously said the only other in-development projects at the studio were the single-player campaign for SmileGate’s Crossfire X shooter for Xbox One and two paid Control expansions set for release this year.

Remedy CEO Tero Virtala said in February’s results that Control had been “a major achievement” for the company, which he said, “proves the capabilities of our team and technology.”

Virtala pointed to Control’s strong reviews and said that although the game’s relatively low marketing spend may have impacted launch sales, post-launch performance was at “a good level”.

“There are still a lot of potential gamers who have yet to discover Control, and we are gradually reaching them,” he said.

Remedy will continue to develop its proprietary Northlight game engine with a team of 40 people, the CEO said.

With the exception of Vanguard, all of Remedy’s game projects are built on Northlight’s game engine, including new technology and tools developed for Control, and new systems enabling online functionality.

Control director Mikael Kasurinen told VGC in 2019 that Remedy is now aiming to create a sense of “continuity” between its games, so that they can be seen as a “shared experience.”

Remedy now owns the rights to both Alan Wake and Control, while the IP for 2016 Xbox One exclusive Quantum Break remains under Microsoft’s control.