Remedy CEO steps down following FBC: Firebreak’s disastrous launch

Tero Virtala, CEO of Control developer Remedy Entertainment, is stepping down from his presumption immediately. The quality comes successful the aftermath of a disappointing motorboat for FBC: Firebreak, the Finnish studio’s archetypal foray into multiplayer gaming. Virtala volition beryllium replaced connected an interim ground by Markus Mäki, Remedy’s main merchandise serviceman and 1 of the studio’s co-founders. The studios says it volition “initiate a hunt process for a caller CEO immediately.”

Virtala took implicit the relation backmost successful 2016, and was a cardinal fig down Remedy’s translation implicit the past decade, arsenic it shifted from a work-for-hire workplace to 1 that developed aggregate projects simultaneously and owned and published its ain games. This play was highlighted by the motorboat of Control successful 2019 and the long-awaited sequel to Alan Wake successful 2023.

Firebreak was meant to beryllium a large portion of this transformation, a self-published spinoff of Control that was an effort to wed the studio’s worldbuilding and storytelling with a live-service co-op shooter. However, the operation didn’t triumph implicit players and, contempt launching a large update successful September, 2 weeks agone Remedy issued a nett warning owed to “weak sales” of Firebreak.

Part of the impetus down Remedy’s displacement to a multi-project workplace — successful summation to Firebreak, it’s besides presently processing Control 2, remasters of Max Payne, and a enigma crippled — was to assistance it woody with imaginable flops similar Firebreak, though Virtala told maine up of the game’s motorboat that, adjacent still, each merchandise was inactive important for the autarkic studio. “Every azygous crippled is highly important for us,” Virtala told The Verge. “There is nary question that we are not afloat insulated. But we are little babelike connected immoderate azygous crippled than we utilized to be.”