Yesterday Remedy published their financial report which looks back over the entirety of the studio's activities throughout 2019.
For the past three years, the studio's financial information has been reported online twice a year, following Remedy's move from being a privately owned business to being a publically owned one in May 2017.
Ahead of the publication today, the investor website recently got a new look with gorgeous never-before-seen artwork from Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and Control. The report went live with an audiocast hosted by Tero Virtala (Remedy's CEO) and Terhi Kauppi (Remedy's CFO). The full recording can be found on the Remedy IR YouTube channel (video embedded below) with the presentation slides on the investor website, HERE.
As with all the financial reports that the studio has posted since 2017, we're going to break down some of the information about the studio and games that were released in the report. If you're here looking for specific numbers, we recommend checking out the original publication (HERE) for those.
First up, the studio!
Since 2016, the studio has been going through a transformation; becoming a multi-project developer rather than focusing on a single release at a time. As a result, Remedy has been focusing on hiring and building teams to support this new plan. By the end of 2019, the studio had 248 employees from 26 different nationalities, bringing the divide between local and international talent at the office to 50/50. In addition to hiring 52 employees last year, from 2770 received job applications, an additional 69 employees were promoted internally.
Currently, there are four game teams working on at the studio on Control, the CROSSFIRE series in collaboration with Smilegate, a third unannounced project, and a multiplayer title being developed by the Vanguard team. Alongside the games, there's another working on the in-house engine, Northlight.
At present, there are 40 developers working on Northlight, and ensuring that the engine can deliver what the game teams needs from it. Throughout Control's development, a number of areas were built upon with the engine, including improved AI, improved animation technology, additional content creation tools, PS4 support (as previous games were released on PC and XBOX), and support for NVIDIA RTX Ray Tracing. With Vanguard's project underway, the focus for the Northlight team is incorporating online functionality, and preparing for next-generation consoles arriving in 2020.
In 2019, the studio received royalties from both Control sales and payments made by Smilegate for CROSSFIRE work. Alan Wake made its return to the Microsoft Store after an extended hiatus, and sales of the game (across all platforms) also contributed notably to revenue. In addition, royalty payments from previously released games "had a positive effect of 2.5 million euros" on Remedy's operating profit.
With the Control DLC packs due to be released this year, and CrossFire X expected to launch on XBOX One, the studio predicts that 2020 will be a financially good year with revenue and operating profit set to increase, particularly in the second half.
The next financial report will cover the first half of 2020 and will be published on August 14th.
The current board consists of: Markus Mäki (Chair), Christian Fredrikson, Jussi Laakkonen, Ossi Pohjola and Henri Österlund.
There are four game teams currently working at Remedy.
The first is the Control team. While the main game shipped on August 27th 2019, the focus now is on delivering additional DLC packs; The Foundation and A.W.E. While the profits received from Control aren't specifically given, in his letter, Tero Virtala (CEO) mentioned that sales at the start had been slow as a result of a small marketing budget, but had been helped since due to critical recognition. With Control, in collaboration with 505Games, Remedy received a 45% of game sales net revenue.
The second team is dedicated to the CROSSFIRE series. During the Microsoft Media Briefing at E3 2019, the publisher announced a new partnership with Smilegate, the result of which will see their upcoming game, Crossfire X, launch on XBOX One in 2020. The first teaser of the game was later revealed at the X019 event in London, with a trailer that explored the work going on behind the scenes at Microsoft, Remedy, and Smilegate.
The third dev team is currently working on an announced project. While mentioned in the report, the project was not further discussed but is believed to be nearing the pre-production phase along with the fourth team.
That fourth team is Vanguard, which was originally announced in late August 2018. The goal for the developers working on the Vanguard project is to provide "long-term service-based multiplayer experiences with some of Remedy's unique game features." Some new details have emerged about their latest project in the publication; while we previously knew that it was the only title currently using the Unreal Engine 4 in addition to Northlight, there is actually currently an internally playable demo of the game which sounds exciting!
With both the third unannounced title and Vanguard nearing pre-production, materials and services expenses have naturally increased by 44.1%. If you would like to learn more about the numbers behind the words, check out the full report, HERE!
- At the end of 2019, there were 249 permanent developers at the studio.
- International talent makes up 50% of the studio, spanning 26 nationalities.
- 52 employees were hired last year, receiving 2770 applications in total.
- 69 employees received internal promotions.
- Remedy received 2.5 million euros from previously released games in 2019.
- There are four game teams at the studio.
- Remedy's in-house engine, Northlight, has a team of 40 developers.
- Improvements to Northlight in 2019 includes advancements with AI, animation, content creation tools, PS4 support, and NVIDIA Ray Tracing support.
- The goal for Northlight going ahead is incorporating online functionality and preparing for next-generation consoles.
- Control's initial sales were slow due to a limited marketing budget, but has since been discovered by more gamers due to critical recognition.
- A third unannounced title and Vanguard's multiplayer title is reaching the pre-production phase.
- There's an internally playable demo of the Vanguard team's project.
- The studio predicts that it will be financially strong in 2020, with the release of Control's two DLC packs, plus the launch of CrossFire X on XBOX One.
