This morning, Remedy announced that its CEO of nine years, Tero Virtala, will step down from the position, although he will continue to work for the Finnish developer while the studio finds a new leader. Co-founder and Chief Product Officer Markus Mäki has already assumed the temporary position of interim CEO. In a statement, Mäki (who acted as the Chairman of the Board until his new appointment and has now been replaced in that role by Henri Österlund) said:
I want to thank Tero Virtala for his substantial contribution to the management of Remedy since 2016. I personally thank Tero for good cooperation and wish him all the best for the future.
The brief press release does not mention why Virtala stepped down, but this is likely related to the financial disaster that was the launch of FBC: Firebreak. Remedy attempted to break into the cooperative multiplayer segment for the first time but failed spectacularly. In our review, we had already noted that the game quickly became repetitive and just couldn't keep the players interested for an extended period of time.
In August, Remedy CEO Tero Virtala had already admitted that the game was underperforming compared to the studio's expectations. The developers tried to stage a comeback with a big free update called Breakpoint, but it wasn't nearly enough. Earlier this month, the Finnish developer had to issue a warning to investors about the lower long-term sales that are now expected from the game. Additionally, they recognized a non-cash impairment of €14.9 million, representing most of the game’s capitalized development costs and allocated purchased publishing and distribution rights. Consequently, they had to adjust the 2025 operating profit to be negative and below that of 2024.
Remedy will post the full Q3 2025 Business Review in exactly a week, on Wednesday, October 29. Hopefully, the studio won't have to resort to layoffs. Alan Wake 2, although critically acclaimed, also did not sell a lot of copies. The studio's next projects include Control 2 (which is being done on a lower budget than Alan Wake 2) and the Max Payne remakes for Rockstar.
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