Remedy Entertainment

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Remedy Entertainment is a video game developer located in Espoo, Finland. The studio was founded in 1995, and has since released eight titles. It is best known for its Alan Wake and Max Payne series.

History[]

Early years and products[]

Remedy was founded in 1995 by demoscene members from groups such as Future Crew. The year after Remedy released its first game Death Rally, a top-down perspective racing shooter published by Apogee and distributed by GT Interactive Software. In the game, the player competes in deadly races with armed cars, trying to finish first while destroying opponents and fulfilling missions.

Still attached to the demoscene, Remedy took part in the 1997 Assembly with Final Reality, a combination of a demo and a 3D benchmark program. Later that year Remedy founded a new company named Futuremark for developing benchmark software that would eventually turn into 3DMark.

The Max Payne era[]

In 2001, Remedy released its second game Max Payne, which tells the story of the eponymous fugitive undercover cop in New York City, vengeful for the murder of his family, framed for the murder of a DEA agent, and hunted by NYPD and the American Mafia. The game is best known for its film noir influences and popularizing bullet time in video games.

Remedy sold all the rights to Max Payne in 2002 to Take-Two Interactive for US$10 million and 969 932 shares of stock.^[2] The following year, a sequel to the franchise developed by Remedy and Rockstar Games was released, titled Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. This would be Remedy's last Max Payne game, as Rockstar continued developing the franchise on its own, but some Remedy employees kept supervising the making of Max Payne 3, like Sam Lake. The latest addition to the series, Max Payne 3 was released on May 15, 2012 in North America and on May 18, 2012 in Europe.

Alan Wake and revised Death Rally[]

In 2005, Remedy revealed that it was developing a new IP titled Alan Wake, a game about a writer of the same name whose wife disappears during the couple's vacation in the Pacific Northwest. While searching for his wife, Alan realizes the events are coming to life from a thriller he doesn't even remember writing.

Alan Wake combines a third-person shooter with psychological horror, drawing inspiration from Twin Peaks and the works of Stephen King. The game was released on Xbox 360 in 2010 and published by Microsoft Game Studios. Alan Wake was extended with two DLCs titled The Signal and The Writer, which act as new episodes in the episodic storyline of Alan Wake.

In 2011, Remedy extended to mobile platforms with the launch of a Death Rally remake on iOS devices. Next year the revised version was released on Android devices and PC as well. Remedy also extended the Alan Wake franchise with a downloadable Xbox Live Arcade title Alan Wake's American Nightmare. The stand-alone game loosely continues the story of Alan Wake, set in a small town of Night Springs, Arizona. In the game Alan tries to chase down his evil doppelgänger Mr. Scratch, who threatens to take away everything Wake loves, including his wife. The game was also released for the PC in May 2012.

Quantum Break and Agents of the Storm[]

Remedy finished working on and released Quantum Break, which was announced during the Xbox One event on 21 May 2013. The game was released on April 5, 2016.^[3] During the development of Quantum Break, the CEO of Remedy, Matias Myllyrinne, and Oskari Häkkinen, the head of franchise development, departed from the company.^[4][5]

During the 2013 VGX Awards, they also revealed Agents of Storm, for the iOS. The game was released by Flaregames for iOS in October 22, 2014.^[6]

Current Projects[]

Remedy announced that it had formed a new team and is currently working on two different projects, neither of which will be related to Alan Wake.^[7] In the following month, Remedy announced their partnership with Smilegate, and that they would handle the single-player story mode of Smilegate's upcoming game CrossFire 2.^[8]

List of Titles[]

• Death Rally (1996)
• Max Payne (2001)
• Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003)
• Alan Wake (2010)
• Death Rally (2011)
• Alan Wake's American Nightmare (2012)
• Agents of Storm (2014)
• Quantum Break (2016)
• Control (2019)
• Alan Wake Remastered (2021)
• CrossfireX (2022)
• Alan Wake II (2023)

References[]