Challenging yet remarkable 2023

Year 2023 was a special and memorable one for Remedy. Alan Wake returned after 13 years with the launch of Alan Wake 2 at the end of October 2023. Alan Wake 2 is the largest and most ambitious project undertaken by Remedy. Finalizing the game with a high quality was a priority and required more personnel during the year than originally planned, which in turn delayed our other projects moving to the next development stages. The successful launch of Alan Wake 2 freed up talents for other game projects, resulting in improved development velocity.

Great reception for Alan Wake 2

We at Remedy are grateful for Alan Wake 2’s positive reception from both critics and players. The game has a Metacritic score of 89 placing it among the very best game launches of 2023, and it has won several awards including Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, and Best Art Direction at The Game Awards. With Alan Wake and Control we now have two established franchises, and our ambition is to grow them into franchises that have high brand recognition, steadily growing user base, more regular cadence of sequels and an ability to generate revenues and profits at a high level.

The sales of Alan Wake 2 started well despite a competitive launch window and an overall exceptional number of great game launches throughout the year. 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. I want to thank the development team for their incredible effort in getting Alan Wake 2 done. As Control proved, a great quality game can have excellent longtail sales and we expect this to be the case with Alan Wake 2 as well. Alan Wake 2 has already recouped a significant part of the investments made by Epic Games Publishing, and we expect the game to be a meaningful revenue and profitability driver for the year.

Meaningful strategic steps

In February 2024, we acquired full rights to the Control franchise from 505 Games. This is a significant positive step for us. While 505 Games was the right partner in 2017, the franchise and our ambitions have grown since. We see that the way to grow the Control franchise is with a different business model and a partner.

Our full year 2023 revenue and profitability were impacted by significantly increased investments in our own game projects, and the impairment charge related to codename Vanguard. Out of the five games we had in development during the year, we co-financed four that are based on Remedy-owned brands, whereas Max Payne1&2 remake is fully funded by the IP owner and publishing partner Rockstar Games. In the fourth quarter of 2023, revenue and profitability declined from the comparable period.

In November we announced a reboot to Codename Vanguard, renamed Codename Kestrel. The requirements for a successful new free-to-play game have clearly increased during the past years. Despite the promising progress during the first half of the year, we decided with Tencent that the potential was not there. Kestrel returned to a concept stage. As a result, we wrote off all the capitalized Vanguard development costs, impacting the profitability of the fourth quarter and full year 2023 by EUR -7.2 million.

2023 was a challenging yet remarkable year for Remedy. Having acquired the full rights to Control, Condor and Control 2, we can now make the right product and business decisions focusing on long-term franchise growth for both Alan Wake and Control. We continue the year 2024 with great enthusiasm, more focus, and plenty of determination, and we expect this to be an exciting year of growth for Remedy.