16th March 2021 Year In Review [2020]

2020 was... not quite what anyone thought it would be. It was a year that saw the world shut down from a virus that wasn't even on the radar for a lot of people as the decade ticked over. For the world, it had been the year of new arrangements, new struggles, working from home, home learning, and staring into the abyss. It required people and business to restructure and adapt to the new lockdowns.

As Remedy celebrated its twenty-fifth year, development had moved to work remotely ahead of the local lockdowns in Finland. Work on Control's DLC, The Foundation continued and concluded at home in the Spring, with the Assist Mode launching months later. A new partnership was announced too, with Epic Games being revealed to be Remedy's publisher for two upcoming games. And we couldn't mention 2020 without talking about Alan Wake's tenth anniversary.

We're a little late this year, but we're back with another rundown of what happened month-by-month. If you've visited us before, you'll know that it's a yearly tradition stretching back to our first year in the community; 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. We're glad to have spent the 2020 with you all.

Here's what happened across those past twelve months...

	2019 - Year In Review For our final article of 2019, we looked back at a year of adventures including the launch of Control, Quantum Break's third anniversary, the announcement of CrossFire X, and more!
	January
	15th January - Poets of the Fall at Alexander Theatre Starting off the year, Poets of the Fall revealed a new project which would see acoustic renditions of their songs released monthly, starting with King of Fools.
	16th January - Bryonato's Speedrun & Dev Commentary Following Bryonato's speedrun of Control (49:35) for GamesDoneQuick, IGN sat down with Adam Persson (Level Designer) & Sean Donnelly (Lead Gameplay Programmer) for a special dev commentary.
	17th January - Remedy's Death Rally Arcade Cabinet To celebrate Remedy's 25 anniversary, we dedicated a month to each game or live-action series, starting with the original Death Rally title. For our first post, we looked back to 2011 and to Remedy's in-house arcade cabinet.
	19th January - Signs of Life Turns Fifteen Poets of the Fall celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of their debut album, Signs of Life, in mid-January. In a social media post dedicated to the launch, the band asked the community to share their memories of the collection.
	22nd January - Hope Wins New York Game Award Courtney Hope took home the trophy for Best Performance at the 9th Annual New York Video Game Awards for her portrayal of Jesse Faden. While she couldn't be at the event in person, she recorded an acceptance speech.
	22nd January - Remedy |Streams Expeditions Challenge For their first livestream of 2020, Remedy attempted to challenge the Expedition times set by the community. Community Manager, Vida Starčević was joined on the day by Sergey Mohov (Senior Game Designer).
	25th January - Lunar New Year To celebrate the occasion, the incredibly talented, Carla, was back with another stunning new year card with a Remedy twist, to celebrate the Year of the Rat! (Art: Eydaemonbroccol)
	29th January - Control Team Wins VES Trophy Closing the month, the talented team behind the game's visual effects brought home the first trophy of 2020, Outstanding Visual Effects In A Real-Time Project, in the prestigious 18th Annual VES Awards Gala!
	31st January - Jari Komppa On Porting Death Rally For our final Death Rally (1996) article of the month, we spoke to Jari Komppa who worked with Remedy back in 2009 to port Death Rally from DOS to Windows, introducing the game to a whole new audience.
	February
	4th February - The Sudden Stop Turns Eight! In early February, we celebrated our eighth anniversary online! A huge thank you to everyone who has followed and supported us. (Special shoutout to melfpic on Instagram for THIS piece of incredible artwork!)
	14th February - D.I.C.E Summit & Awards Ceremony 2020 Control was one of the most nominated titles at this year's annual D.I.C.E Awards, with eight nominations. At the end of the night, Remedy took home four trophies! You can read our wrap-up of the night's events, HERE!
	14th February - Valentine's Day For the day, we took a little break from tradition and celebrated Ystävänpäivä ("Friend's Day" in Finland) with a list of incredible people we've met over the past eight years.
	15th February - Remedy Publishes 2019 Financial Report Remedy published its financial report for the entirety of 2019, covering the impact of Control's launch, the announcement of CrossFire X for XBOX One, and the studio's transformation.
	18th February - Alexander Theatre Session: War In February, Poets of the Fall released a new Alexander Theatre session, this time it was the much-beloved track, War, which featured prominently in Alan Wake!
	24th February - Control Wins Six NAVGTR Awards NAVGTR announced their winners at their 19th annual awards ceremony, which placed Control in top spot claiming six trophies and the most awards out of any nominated title.
	25th February - New Article: Joining the Community In late February, I wrote about my experiences joining the community and what it was like starting The Sudden Stop just two weeks before American Nightmare's launch.
	26th February - American Nightmare Infographic Continuing our twenty-fifth-anniversary celebrations, we created an infographic on Alan Wake's American Nightmare with six statistics about the game's development.
	29th February - Fan Art Inspired by American Nightmare To close February, we spotlighted some of the incredible artwork created by fellow fans in the community including Alexandr, 03roku, Evil-Owl-Loki, GattoBamBoom, UDontNoJak, Fraser, InvisibleRain, and Nathan. (Art: 03roku)
	March
	3rd March - Control Joins PlayStation Now Line-Up In early March, Sony announced eleven new games joining PlayStation Now, including Control and Shadow of the Tomb Raider which would be joining the library until the end of August.
	5th March 2020 - New Video On Control's Real-Time VFX Following the NAVGTR Awards, Remedy published a new video looking at how their visual effects team brought Control's world to life by making "reactive environments and dynamic destruction".
	6th March - The Foundation Team Wraps Up Development Work on Control's DLC pack, The Foundation, wrapped up today, three weeks ahead of its scheduled launch on March 26th.
	8th March - International Women's Day March 8th was International Women's Day! Thank you to all of the amazing women that have worked behind the scenes at Remedy, on titles both past and present. At the studio, they celebrated with a group photo!
	16th March - The Foundation First Look Revealed  With 10 days left to go before The Foundation launches on PS4 and The Epic Store, IGN posted an exclusive reveal and interviews with Mikael Kasurinen, Sergey Mohov, Thomas Puha, and Courtney Hope.
	16th March - Alexander Theatre: The Sweet Escape Poets of the Fall was back with another Alexander Theatre session, this time with a recent track, The Sweet Escape, from their album, Ultraviolet.
	19th March - 20th Annual Game Developers Awards With a new format, the 2020 Independent Games Festival & Game Developers Choice Award was back on our screens. After being nominated in five categories, the Control team collected three well-deserved trophies.
	22nd March - Not-Quite-Supermodel Donates Proceeds In March, Kathy Tong and Stephanie Jimenez Schiller announced that sales from Not-Quite-Supermodel would be going to the WHO's Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund throughout the course of 2020.
	24th March - Control's Official Soundtrack Now Online! If you loved Control's soundtrack, Martin Stig Andersen's and Petri Alanko's brilliant work became available to stream online via Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Tidal.
	24th March - PayneReactor Turns 21! PayneReactor turned 21 this year! Originally known as Insane Payne, the site was created by Kristian Brynie Hollund, in 1999. In 2013, Patrick took over the site, shifting its focus to story-driven games.
	25th March - Media Teases New Foundation Footage With Control's first expansion pack, The Foundation, coming to PS4 and PC in late-March, select media outlets got an exclusive first glimpse at the upcoming level.
	25th March - March Update & Nvidia's DLSS 2.0 Rolls Out Coinciding with the launch of The Foundation, the March Update (1.08 and 1.09) saw a number of improvements including map adjustments, changes to the ability tree, and fixes to the Jukebox Token system.
	26th March - The Foundation Launches on PC & PS4 Control's first DLC pack, The Foundation launches on PC (via The Epic Store) and PlayStation 4, with the adventure coming to Xbox in June.
	26th March - Epic Games Reveals Remedy Partnership Epic Games announced a new publishing deal with three developers. Each studio will be retaining IP rights to the titles and development will be entirely funded by the publishers.
	27th March - Remedy's The Foundation Twitch Broadcast Remedy's Sergey Mohov hosted a special three-hour-long broadcast delving into The Foundation. Sergey was joined by Vida Starčević, Adam Persson, and Mikael Kasurinen who called in.
	31st March - Retrospective: Agents of Storm To celebrate the 25th milestone, we looked back at the 2014 iOS game, Agents of Storm, Remedy's first mobile game made in-house following the studio separation into two smaller development teams.
	April
	2nd April - BAFTA Games 2020 Wrap-Up While the physical red carpet was cancelled, the winners for the BAFTA Games 2020 were announced in a special broadcast. Coming into the event, Control and Death Stranding caught headlines with eleven nominations each.
	5th April - Quantum Break's 4th Anniversary Today marked the fourth anniversary of Quantum Break's launch on XBOX One and PC (Windows 10), as well as the fourth anniversary of Cam Rogers' Quantum Break: Zero State. Here's how we celebrated it! (Art: Melfpic)
	12th April - Causing Havoc In Quantum Break's TV Series This Easter, we took a look at Quantum Break's unlockable live-action scenes and how our little actions in the game impacted the show and the in-game world.
	15th April - Alexander Theatre: Dreaming Wide Awake At the heart of Poets of the Fall's Alexander Theatre session for April was the stunning Dreaming Wide Awake from the album Twilight Theatre.
	22nd April - Control's April (v.1.10) Released Despite working from home and under a nationwide lockdown, Control's dev team worked hard to deliver the April Update (v1.10) which focuses on improvements to the game's first expansion pack.
	16th April - Remedy Talks COVID-19 Remote-Working GamesIndustry.biz and IGN spoke with developers to see how they were coping with lockdown and how they were continuing their work on upcoming titles at home. (Photograph: SamLakeRMD)
	30th April - Quantum Break Live-Action Show Infographic Continuing our celebrations of Remedy's 25th anniversary, we posted an infographic about Quantum Break's live-action show.
	May
	14th May - A Conversation With Matthew Porretta For Alan Wake's 10th anniversary, we sat down with Matthew Porretta to talk about what it was like stepping into the booth for the first time, getting into character, Mr Scratch, and more.
	14th May - Remedy Kickstarts Bright Falls Week To celebrate ten years, Vida sat down with Sam Lake, Matthew Porretta, and Ilkka Villi in an hour-long broadcast to discuss Alan Wake, before handing it over to seven hand-selected influencers for a week-long livestream. (Image: Remedy)
	14th May - Alan Wake 10th Anniversary Competition For the tenth anniversary, Remedy has teamed up with The Sudden Stop, PayneReactor, and ComunidadRemedy for a special competition in which ten fans won a specially-commissioned Alan Wake 10th anniversary torch.
	14th May - Community Creations Celebrating Alan Wake From brand new fan art, to collages, new articles, and even interpretations of a themed park exhibit, so many brilliant and talented artists came together to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the game.
	15th May - Alexander Theatre Session: Fragile For their May single, Poets of the Fall went back to their earlier work with an intimate acoustic recording of Fragile.
	21st May - Alan Wake Joins XBOX Games Pass In late-May, Alan Wake joined Quantum Break, on the XBOX Game Pass library. The game was added to the program alongside another brilliant Finnish title, Cities: Skylines.
	28th May - Nordic Game Awards 2020 The Nordic Game Awards 2020 was a digital event this year, held in Malmö, Sweden. The competition was tough, but Control took home two incredible and well-deserved awards; Best Technology and Nordic Game of the Year 2020.
	.June .
	4th June - Community Spotlight: RyouRyou Our first Community Spotlight of 2020 was the incredible RyouRyou, a Japanese designer who challenged himself to recreate Jesse Faden's Service Weapon using a 3D printer.
	4th June - The PayneReaction Podcast With normal life grounding to halt due to the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic, fellow fansite PayneReactor has announced a brand new project called The PayneReaction Podcast.
	10th June - Control To Launch On Next-Gen Consoles Moments after the PlayStation 5 reveal event wrapped up, 505Games tweeted an announcement on social media revealing that Control would be coming to both XBOX Series X and PlayStation 5.
	11th June - Laced Records Brings Control to Vinyl Composed by Petri Alanko and Martin Stig Andersen, Laced Records revealed that they would be bringing Control's gorgeous soundtrack to vinyl, including Sankarin Tango and Poets of the Fall's Take Control.
	16th June - Alexander Theatre Sessions: False Kings For their June session, Poets of the Fall posted a special acoustic recording of False Kings, performed earlier in the year at the Alexander Theatre in Helsinki.
	17th June - Remedy's June Expeditions Livestream Remedy was back with another remotely-held livestream, as they delved into Control's Expeditions levels. The broadcast featured special guests, Adam Persson (Level Designer), and Juha Vainio (Executive Producer).
	17th June - PS4 & PC Fans On Their Foundation Tips Ahead of The Foundation's launch on XBOX One, 505Games spoke to a number of fans who have already checked out Jesse's latest adventure to hear what tips they would give to XBOX players about to dive in.
	19th June - First Details On CrossFireX's Beta Emerges In late June, the studios started to gear up towards the release of the beta version of CrossFireX. Throughout the day, new community hubs were set up, along with new social media channels, and brand new images
	23rd June - GameSpot's Remedy Roundtable Brooke Maggs, Mikael Kasurinen, and Sam Lake sat down with GameSpot for their fourth week of Play For All to talk about what inspires them in a charity livestream, raising money for COVID-19 Direct Relief and Black Lives Matter.
	25th June - The Foundation DLC Launches on XBOX One In late June, Control's DLC pack, The Foundation launched on XBOX One, opening up the cave systems hidden beneath the FBC to a brand new audience.
	25th June - CrossFireX's Open Beta Launches After months of anticipation, CrossFireX moved into open beta, allowing XBOX One owners to jump on board its multiplayer campaign and try out the series on the platform for the first time.
	25th June - Remedy's The Foundation Livestream Remedy held their second livestream of the Summer, this time celebrating The Foundation! Hosted by Vida, the broadcast featured Adam Persson (Level Designer) Elmeri Raitanen (Art Director), and extra special guest Hertta.
	26th June - Jeannie Bolet's Charity Raffles Alongside being an actor, Jeannie Bolet (Clarice Ogawa in Quantum Break) also creates jewellery for her store, Bibelot LA. In June, she held raffles featuring handmade pieces to raise money for non-profit charity organisations raising $777.
	July
	7th July - The Writers' Guild of Great Britain Lectures With the ongoing pandemic, The Writers' Guide of Great Britain featured a week-long series of game narrative lectures featuring former members of Remedy's writing team including Eevi Korhonen and Mikko Rautalahti. (Catch up HERE!)
	15th July - Alexander Theatre Sessions: Angel Poets of the Fall's keyboardist, Markus "Captain" Kaarlonen, made his debut appearance for the band's acoustic rendition of Angel, performed at the Alexander Theatre.
	23rd July - First Details For Operation Spectre The Xbox Games Showcase revealed our first glimpse of Remedy's single-player, story-mode campaign for CrossFireX. Not only did we see a brand new trailer but we heard more about Operation Spectre.
	25th July - Community Spotlight: Rowan's Projects Our Community Spotlight for July was the impossibly talented, Rowan, who created a series of mindblowing Remedy-themed projects including handsewn patches, sleek-looking music videos, and more. (Art: Rowan)
	August
	3rd August - Remedy Reveals 25th Anniversary Giveaway To celebrate the studio's twenty-fifth year, Remedy announced a competition for a signed RMD25 snapback. To enter, fans were asked to share their memories or favourite moments using the #RMD25 hashtag.
	6th August - First Look at Control's AWE DLC In a surprise announcement, PlayStation's State of Play (August) revealed the first trailer for Control's second and final DLC pack, AWE. Following the release, a number of new blog posts went live with extra details.
	7th August - Remembering Sami Vanhatalo In early August, news emerged that Sami Vanhatalo, one of the studio's co-founders had sadly passed away.  Sami was fundamental in creating Remedy as one of the studio's co-founders and worked at the studio for over 17 years.
	7th August - Remedy Connected Universe Announced In an open letter, Sam Lake (Creative Director) revealed the Remedy Connected Universe. Similar to the Star Trek Universe or Marvel Cinematic Universe, the RCU is a branching story connecting the studio's titles.
	12th August - Control Ultimate Edition Announced In mid-August, Remedy and 505Games announced the Control Ultimate Edition, a brand new special bundle of the title which would be set to launch on Steam, XBOX One, Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
	13th August - Remedy Livestreams AWE Opening  With two weeks left to go before Control's AWE launched, Vida hosted a special livestream with guests Sam Lake (Creative Director) and Mikael Kasurinen (Game Director) to showcase the first fifteen minutes of the adventure.
	13th August - The Art & Making Of Control Announced During the AWE Twitch broadcast, Sam announced a new collaboration with Future Press. Scheduled for a "Holiday 2020" launch, The Art & Making Of Control, is a limited edition hardback book packed with almost 400 pages.
	13th August - Control's Assist Mode Update Revealed In the closing moments of the AWE Twitch stream, Remedy talked about a new free upgrade coming to Control. In the Assist Mode, players would be able to change energy and health regeneration, and much more.
	13th August - Financial Review H1 2020 In mid-August, Remedy published their financial report spanning the first six months of 2020. In the piece, they talk about their development teams, Vanguard, and their future goals.
	18th August - Bonus! Matthew Porretta Interview To celebrate Alan Wake's 10th anniversary, we sat down with Matthew Porretta. As our interview wrapped up, we had to ask about his Dyna-Mite performance in Control.
	18th August - Finnish Games Awards 2020  Remedy Entertainment took home two awards at The Finnish Game Awards 2020; Big Screen Game of the Year and Finnish Game of the Year! With the threat of Covid-19, the ceremony was held remotely and livestreamed.
	20th August - 505Games Clarifies Control on Next-Gen  Following player feedback, 505Games clarified their recent announcement of the Control Ultimate Edition and the availability of the edition on next-gen consoles and access to the game via backwards compatibility.
	21st August - Remedy Celebrates Anniversary with Cava  To celebrate the studio's 25th anniversary, a new blog post was published on the official site detailing the company's history and how they're internally celebrating the milestone.
	26th August - Alexander Theatre Session Spotlights Lift For August, Poets of the Fall did something extra special with a brand new twist on one of their most iconic songs, Lift.
	27th August - AWE DLC Launches (w. Assist Mode!) In late August, Remedy celebrated the launch of AWE and their Assist Mode. With the threat of Covid-19, the adventure was development entirely remotely.
	27th August - Control Ultimate Edition Launches on Steam One year after Control's launch, the title came to Steam with the Control Ultimate Edition.
	28th August - Studios Celebrate Control's Anniversary In a video celebrating Control's one year anniversary, Sam Lake, Mikael Kasurinen, Courtney Hope, and Matthew Porretta spoke about the reactions to the game. (Image: DanDuncanArt)
	31st August - Epic Games Publishing Presents... Coinciding with the studio's twenty-fifth anniversary, Epic has uploaded a new mini-documentary about Remedy, as part of the latest instalment of their Epic Games Publishing Presents series.
	September
	1st September - Hope Community AMA on Reddit Control's Lead Actor, Courtney Hope, joined fans on the community-run ControlRemedy Reddit channel for a special AMA session.
	7th September - Mikael Kasurinen's Steam AMA Following the recent launch of the Control Ultimate Edition, Game Director Mikael Kasurinen took part in a new developer AMA on Steam to answer community questions.
	9th September - Remedy's Finlandization Program Throughout the Summer, Remedy's relocation programme adopted new social distancing measures to keep everyone safe, while also introducing new faces at the studio to their city. .
	10th September - Control Ultimate Edition Now on GOG For those who like their games with a little bit less DRM, Control Ultimate Edition launched on GOG, two weeks after launching on Steam.
	11th September - Original Death Rally Now Free on Steam Death Rally became free once again in September. Originally launching on MS-DOS in 1996, the game got a Windows port in 2009 by Jari Komppa before coming to Steam in 2015.
	15th September - Digital Dragons Online 2020  For 2020, Digital Dragons went forward as a remote, online event. During the week, there were lectures from Brooke Maggs, Thomas Puha, Stuart Macdonald, and Juha Vainio.
	16th September - Control Anniversary PAX Online Panel Moderated by Janina Gavankar, "Control - A Year Later. The Road to Developing an Award-Winning Supernatural Trip" featured special guests, Sam Lake, Mikael Kasurinen, Courtney Hope, and Matthew Porretta.
	24th September  - Control Launch Title For Amazon Luna In late September, Amazon revealed their new game subscription service, Amazon Luna, with Control at the heart of their debut trailer.
	24th September  - "Story in AWE and Control" Livestream In Remedy's first Autumn livestream, Vida was joined by Brooke Maggs and Clay Murphy, who both worked in the narrative team for Control and its DLC pack, AWE.
	30th September  - AWE Nominated For Golden Joystick In late September, the shortlist for the 38th Golden Joystick Awards were revealed. Among the nominations was Control's AWE DLC which was competing in the "Best Game Expansion" category.
	October
	1st October - "Audio in Control" Autumn Livestream For the second Autumn 2020 livestream, Sam Hughes and Juha Vainio joined the livestream to discuss tackling the audio in Control.
	8th October - "Quantum Break: Back In Time" Livestream For the final livestream of the season, the developers shifted things up with a look back at Quantum Break with Thomas Hudson (former Senior Designer) and Elmeri Raitanen (former Lead VFX Artist).
	15th October - Community Spotlight: Adam's T-Shirts If you're in the Alan Wake community, chances are that you already know Adam; he has been one of the most active and supportive members. In our Community Spotlight, we take a look at his amazing graphic design and art.
	21st October - Alexander Theatre: Children of the Sun Poets of the Fall was back with their tenth Alexander Theatre Session, with a special twist. For their performance of Children of the Sun, the band teamed up with Triosis+, delivering a beautiful rendition of the song.
	22nd October -  #CreateWithControl Competition In late October, 505Games announced a new giveaway for fans in the United Kingdom and the United States, in which three people would win their own special Control vinyl signed by the dev team.
	6th October - Develop:Star Awards 2020 Nominations Control was nominated across five categories in the Develop:Star Awards including "Best Visual Art", "Best Narrative", Best Original IP", "Best Audio" and "Game of the Year".
	November
	4th November - Control Wins Big At Develop:Star Awards The evening was a resounding success for Remedy and 505Games, with the game collecting three trophies, matching Dreams (by Media Molecule) for most wins at the DevelopStar Awards 2020.
	5th November - Control Launches On Nintendo Switch In their October Mini Direct, Nintendo announced that, not only would Control be launching on the Nintendo Switch, but that the Control Ultimate Edition - Cloud Version was available to play right away!
	6th November - Control [Next-Gen] Delayed In a social media post, Remedy and 505Games revealed that the PS5 and XBOX Series X versions of the Control Ultimate Edition would be delayed, pushing the launch back to 2021 to allow the developers extra time to get things just right.
	19th November - CrossfireX Delayed Until 2021 Previously slated for a 2020 release, Smilegate stated that, due to unforeseen challenges throughout this past year, CrossfireX will be launching on XBOX in 2021.
	December
	2nd December - Control Community Team AMA Jade Nicole (Games), Vida Starčević (Remedy) and Antonela Pounder (505 Games) held an AMA on the Nintendo Switch fan-run subreddit, talking about the industry, their favourite characters, and food.
	9th December - Capital Markets Day  In December, Remedy held a two-hour-long webcast directed at investors, media, and analysts, talking about the studio. In their discussion, they also revealed that Control had passed two million sales since its launch in August 2019.
	11th December - Alexander Theatre Session Album Out Following a year of monthly acoustic releases, Poets of the Fall's brand new album, Alexander Theatre Sessions, was released on vinyl, CD, and cassette.
	18th December - Control Next-Gen Dates Announced Just before the holidays, Remedy and 505Games revealed new dates for the digital and retail edition for the PS5 and XBOX Series X/S versions of the Control Ultimate Edition.
	25th December - Season's Greetings! For 2020, we teamed up with the ever-brilliant Evil-Owl-Loki for a special holiday card. Remedy, Poets of the Fall, and Petri Alanko also released their own holiday treats too! (Commission: Evil-Owl-Loki)
	28th December - Remedy's End of Year Letter As 2020 drew to a close, Remedy published a letter on their website detailing the last twelve months as they wrapped up the year.

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