Kestrel was the name of Remedy’s co-op game.
Saves money, helps other projects
Now the studio reports that they are canceling the “premium” game that had a small team looking at the game’s possible concept – the game was therefore in an early planning phase.
“Codename Kestrel showed promise early on, but was anyway in an early concept phase. Our other projects have progressed well and are progressing to the next stages of development, and increasing focus on them gives us advantages. We can redeploy talented Kestrel developers to these other game projects, and many of our support functions get extra focus on their operations,” reports Remedy’s CEO Tero Virtala.
The decision to cancel “codename Kestrel” gives Remedy the opportunity to focus more on the other games in the portfolio. Other ongoing game development projects will have experienced developers redeployed from Kestrel. In addition, the planned investment needs for Kestrel are removed and Remedy’s overall recruitment needs are reduced.
Remedy
The last time we wrote about the game was last winter. At that time, the game changed direction, which is often a hint that the project is not going as it should:
“The plan was for the game to be free, but now Remedy, which had great success with the sequel to Alan Wake from 2010, has chosen to change the model and go for a payment model instead. Also, the plan back then was for Tencent to distribute the title, and for it to be a co-op player-versus-environment (PvE) game. This hasn’t changed, but the money model has.
“Due to the uncertainty associated with creating a successful game in the rapidly changing F2P market with associated risks, the parties have discussed a new direction for the game project, which will be given the new code name, ‘Kestrel,'” Remedy explained at the time.
