Today, Finnish developer Remedy Entertainment decided jointly with Tencent to cancel the cooperative multiplayer game they were developing.
Originally codenamed Vanguard, the game was designed as a free-to-play live service title. The partnership with Tencent (which also owns a 14% minority stake in Remedy) was announced in late 2021, with the Chinese giant grabbing Asian publishing rights as well as a license to develop a mobile version.
The game was subsequently delayed and then rebooted as Project Kestrel just six months ago, changing its business model from free-to-play to premium. However, that clearly wasn't enough to salvage the project.
Remedy CEO Tero Virtala said in a statement:
Codename Kestrel showed early promise, but the project was still in its early concept stage. Our other projects have advanced well and are moving to the next stages of development, and increasing focus on them provides us with benefits. We can reallocate talented Kestrel developers to these other game projects, and many of our support functions get additional focus on their operations. This is yet another means to ensure that our game projects continue advancing well. I want to thank our Kestrel development team. Though we decided to discontinue the project for wider Remedy benefits, our team has done good work and provided us with valuable learnings. I also want to thank Tencent for their partnership so far. They have been very professional and supportive.
The upside is that Remedy will now reallocate the developers to the existing projects, such as the Max Payne remakes and the continuation of the company's owned franchises, Alan Wake and Control, which the studio plans to grow.
Remedy also still has another cooperative multiplayer game in the works, the so-called Project Condor, a Control spin-off. The game progressed to the production stage in late 2023, and in late March, Remedy showed an infographic with some background details on Condor.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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