Let’s do a check in. Until a few months ago, Remedy was working in secret with Epic Games Publishing on two projects. These are now known since it was indeed Alan Wake Remastered and Alan Wake 2. Productions carried out on the sidelines of CrossfireX, Smilegate’s FPS which will be released on February 10, 2022 on Xbox and which Remedy has designed the single player campaign. At the same time, Remedy did not intend to abandon the world of Control and signed last June with 505 Games for the production of a spin off cooperative for 4 players called Project Condor, a necessary step before being able to extend the Control franchise with a game with a bigger budget.
But this Project Condor wasn’t the only cooperative multiplayer project in the works at Remedy. The Finnish studio has been brewing for months a Vanguard, code name of a game that seems to have been stuck for quite some time in the prototyping stage. Not for long, because this free-to-play now has top-notch support in the person of Tencent Games. Developed with the Unreal Engine on consoles and PCs, Vanguard will be released in some Asian countries by Tencent, which will also handle localization in these territories, while Remedy will directly release its game to the rest of the world.
“Development of the game is currently in the proof of concept phase. Its development budget, until the end of the first year of operation, will be around that of a typical AAA game from Remedy. This development will be co-funded by Remedy and Tencent. Remedy and Tencent will be responsible for their own costs of publishing and operating the game in their respective territories and will share a portion of the revenues with the other party after recovery of development costs.“, explains the press release.
In addition, the agreement provides that Tencent will have the option of producing a separate mobile version of Vanguard and ensure its distribution all over the world. Tencent will fund this entire mobile version while sharing a portion of the revenue with Remedy. Recall that Tencent had already invited to the capital of Remedy last spring and holds 3.8% of the shares of the studio of Tero Virtala. “Vanguard marks Remedy’s first entry into the games-as-a-service business model, executed by our team of free-to-play experts. We’re building something new and exciting in the cooperative multiplayer industry“, comments the CEO. Remedy will have the opportunity to discuss its various projects as part of its annual economic report which will be presented on February 11, 2022.