Control studio Remedy issues profit warning due to ‘weak sales’ of FBC: Firebreak
The Alan Wake developer will swallow the majority of the game’s costs
Remedy Entertainment has issued a profit warning to investors, attributing it to “weak sales” of its co-op shooter, FBC: Firebreak.
Firebreak, a PvE first-person shooter set in the Control universe and Remedy’s first full multiplayer game, was released in June. At the time, Remedy reported that launch sales had underperformed, but committed to improving the game based on player feedback.
Two weeks ago, the studio released the game’s first major update. However, in a note to investors published this weekend, Remedy said sales had still not reached its internal targets.
As a result, the company has lowered its outlook for its current business year and warned investors that it will take a hit of 14.9 million euros, which represents the majority of the game’s development and publishing costs.
The Alan Wake and Max Payne studio has changed its outlook for the current business year from expecting a revenue and operating profit increase, to expecting operating profit to be negative.
“Remedy is recognizing a non-cash impairment of capitalized development costs and allocated purchased publishing and distribution rights related to FBC: Firebreak,” said Remedy Entertainment’s CEO Tero Virtala. “While we balance future investments to the title, we continue developing and improving the game in line with our updated long-term sales forecast.”
In its half-year financial report published in August, Remedy said that while FBC: Firebreak reached over 1 million players in its first ten days, this didn’t necessarily result in financial success since the “majority of the players were Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 users”, where it was available as part of Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus.
According to SteamDB, the game’s start on Steam was modest, hitting a peak of around 2,000 concurrent players at launch, and dropping to less than a hundred since.
