This week, Remedy sent out their September 2024 issue of A Dose of Remedy, a newsletter which explores the weird and wonderful world of game development. In their latest email, the company shares news of their collaboration with Annapurna, they also look back at their recent Control celebrations, and remind viewers to check out their developer livestreams if they haven't already.
This newsletter is recreated in full below as an archive of Remedy's history, but we highly recommend subscribing directly to receive all the goodness via your inbox.
4 September 2024
This dose will take you 4 minutes to read.
Welcome to A Dose of Remedy!
Dear Remedy community,
It’s been a busy summer for us. In June, we released the first expansion to Alan Wake 2, Night Springs, together with the much-requested Photo Mode, and we also announced the Alan Wake 2 physical editions, coming this October. We’re currently busy working on the second expansion, The Lake House, releasing later this year, but there are other things happening in the coming months too. So even If the summer has now turned into fall, things are really heating up here at Remedy!
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Annapurna & Remedy Join Forces
At the end of August, we announced a strategic cooperation with Annapurna, which is pretty exciting for us for many reasons!
First of all, they will co-finance the development of Control 2 with us, but as a part of the deal, they will also gain the rights to expand the Control and Alan Wake franchises into film, television and other selected audiovisual media. Annapurna has released award-winning movies such as Zero Dark Thirty and American Hustle, so we’re quite thrilled to see where this cooperation will go in the future.
We have for years tried to get an Alan Wake television series off the ground, but as we are always busy with what we are best at, making video games, it’s been hard to find the time to navigate Hollywood. We believe we now have a great partner who knows what we like and what our limitations are, so here’s hoping that in the upcoming years, tv series and movies based on Remedy’s properties will happen.
Read more about the deal on our blog.
Remedy Anniversary
On August 18th, we blew out 29 candles on Remedy's birthday cake! Only metaphorically, however, as we are saving all our cake and our candle-blowing skills for next year, when it will be Remedy's thirtieth anniversary. Thirty years is a big milestone, especially for a company in the video game industry, which has become increasingly volatile over the past handful of years.
Every year we look back on the years behind us, which made us who we are. Do you know how Remedy started out? We were originally just a few Finns from the local demoscene who wanted to make games, and now there's over 300 of us from all over the world. To hear about Remedy's beginnings and see some baby-faced developers from the nineties, we recommend this mini-documentary on Remedy by Complex, in which we talk about our first few games.
We also look to the years ahead of us with two things we have never lacked at Remedy – ambition and innovation. Keep your eyes on us – there's big things ahead!
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Control Anniversary
August 27th marked another milestone for us – Control turned five years old! Thank you so much to the entire Control community for keeping work in the glove and the house standing, as Ahti would say. (Ask your Finnish friend what that one means.) To celebrate, we asked our community to tell us what Control means to them using the #5YearsInControl hashtag on X or by chatting with us on Instagram or Facebook for a chance to win a small Control gift bag. Here's a small sampler of what folks had to say:
"Control, to me, was the single greatest storyline I have ever played in a video game. The feel of the graphics was just hauntingly beautiful and terrifying at the same time. I still play it to this day, and I believe I’ve played it all the way through around seven times. It will always be my favorite video game." – ohinmn on Instagram
"There are parts of this game that will forever live in my soul. The sound design of the Board. The animation of the Service Weapon. The voice acting of the Director. The motel. Jesse's performance. Those damn clocks. Thanks for accessibility options btw!" – Calvin Wong Tze Loon on X
"Playing Control was an opportunity to escape to something else. A world in chaos where Jesse's pragmatic ability to keep pushing forward can inspire you to overcome the most terrifying obstacles. Screaming banshee popping up behind you? Hit it with an office chair. Flying anchor? Must be Tuesday. Control is a lesson itself in control. Your situation is what you make of it and how you handle it, and I will always love that about the game." – Brian Siela on Facebook
We also had Courtney Hope, our Director Jesse Faden, record a thank-you message for the fans. And finally, we supported members of our virtual photography community over at Capture Control with their celebratory event, in which they asked virtual photographers to submit up to four photos of their favorite things about Control.
Last, but not least, we had the opportunity to work with the talented Krystine Art, who created an incredible tribute to Control with her anniversary fanart, both pictured above.
To check out some wonderful anniversary art and virtual photos created by our community, head to our anniversary blog.
Meet the developers
This is where we let the people making our games talk about their work. This time, we’re talking to Juha Vainio and Ville Varis from the Control team.
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- Joined Remedy in 2017 as the Lead Producer for Control, where he steered the production of the game through production and shipping, as well as several ports and two paid expansions.
- Previously CEO/Founder of Epic Owl working on Space Arena: Build and Fight, and Senior Producer at Rovio on Angry Birds Star Wars, the original Angry Birds post-launch updates, and several mid-core mobile games.
- Currently the Head of the Control Franchise and the Executive Producer on Control 2.
- At Remedy for 5 years. He first joined the company as a trainee during the final nine months of Control’s development. During that time he worked on AI enemy behaviors, encounter design and balancing.
- Since then he has worked on both of the Control DLCs and the pre-production of Project Condor. Currently working on Control 2 as a gameplay designer.
- Main focuses during projects have been enemy and boss fight design and behavior, player weapon design and player ability design, with some minor player 3Cs design in the mix.
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