Today, Remedy surprised fans with a social media takeover... of sorts. The studio changed their company name online to Poison Pill Entertainment and uploaded new profile pictures showcasing a striped letter P against a black background. Their new tagline reads, "Since 1995, Night Springs City", a reference to the fictional TV show from the Alan Wake series.
While the change was initially posted stealthy, the developer later retweeted the new logo with the tag "@alanwake", and a pill emoji.
A Poison Pill.
When it comes to the name, the community has their different theories. Some are taking it as a literal name, a poison pill being the direct opposite of a remedy, and Alan Wake 2, in particular, is no stranger to mirrors. Other fans are making reference to the technical term used in connection with shareholders. The phrase "Poison Pill" is a defensive tactic used by a company's board of directors against a hostile takeover. They can be put into place when a competition or interested party owns enough shares to potentially control the vote for a publicly traded company and has the power to take over the company without the consent of the company's board. When it comes to board of directors in the Remedy universe, Control's Federal Bureau of Control immediately comes to mind...
Rolling Out The Conspiracy Board.
While a coincidence or connection, the logo change has sparked rumours in the community about a potential teaser at PlayStation's State of Play tomorrow. The Poison Pill social media switch took place at 14:32 BST (GMT +1), just twenty-eight minutes before PlayStation's last-minute reveal of the new thirty-minute showcase.
If that wasn't enough to kindle interest, Geoff Keighley retweeted both the State of Play announcement and the new Remedy look next to each other between posts about his upcoming Summer Games Fest. The tweet was then picked up by Remedy's Creative Director Sam Lake (though being on holiday), who responded with suspicious eye emojis. The brief interactions have led to an afternoon of speculation.
The Full Schedule.
Of course, all of this is just what could happen. The best way to avoid missing it is to check in to a number of scheduled events over the next week. Even if you don't see any new Alan Wake 2 goodness, you're still going to have a good time with the games and discussions on show. So, what are those events?
Tomorrow, Remedy's Vida Starčević (Senior Community Manager) and Julius Fondem (Community Manager) will delve more into the creation of the Dark Place in Alan Wake 2 in a livestream at 2pm BST, featuring Nazareno Urbano (Lead Environment Artist), Admir Burnić (Level Designer), and Dimitri Giacoletto (Level Designer). You can watch via Twitch or YouTube.
Then, later, at 11pm BST (GMT +1), PlayStation will kick off its thirty-minute State of Play Livestream. The stream will feature updates on 14 PS5 and PS VR2 titles. You can catch the show on YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok.
Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest 2024 will kick off its live livestream on June 7th from the YouTube Theater at 10pm BST (GMT +1). We'll update this page with links closer to the time.
