MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The financial details of deals between developers and major publishers are usually just a matter of speculation. But late last week Control developer Remedy did provide an outline of how its deal with Epic Games for an upcoming release will work.
The deal, signed back in March 2020, is for both a triple-A and a “smaller scale project,” said CEO Tero Virtala, for console and PC. The details came as part of its annual earnings statement (via GI.biz).
“Both projects are based on Remedy’s own game IP, and we retain the IP ownership. Epic fully funds the development and has committed to significant marketing investment. After the development and publishing costs have been recouped from game sales, the net revenues will be shared 50/50 between Epic and Remedy,” he revealed.
He added that the developer already has close to 100 people working on the projects. The smaller scale game is in production, with the triple-A title to enter production soon, presumably staff will shift from one to the other over time. Overall there are now 275 people working at Remedy, but that’s only part of the story, with another 370 external devs working on its titles in the last year, spread across 31 different partner companies.
Elsewhere the company continues work with Smilegate on Crossfire, with work on the second single-player campaign finished as of the end of last year. Remedy here is bringing its narrative flair to a series known for its multiplayer roots.
Meanwhile, work continues on Vanguard, which started back in 2018, a service-based title, again utilising “the world-building and narrative strengths of Remedy,” but this time fully integrated into an ongoing multiplayer game. The free-to-play co-op game “is still in its early stages, but the pace of development and our first external tests and research show promise. The publishing model for Vanguard is yet to be decided.”
In terms of size, Virtala said: “Remedy’s headcount grew by 11% during 2020 and reached 275 employees. We have steadily had 20–30 open positions and will continue to grow our headcount selectively while we also increase our external development capabilities.” Although he notes that the company in the last year used 31 external development partners and 370 staff in addition to in-house talents.
Coming around to the results themselves, Remedy (as many others) had a stellar year. Revenue was up by 29.8 per cent to €41.1m and profits doubled year on year to €13.2m. All that without a major new title release, although Control did come to numerous additional platforms, most notably Steam after 12 months on Epic Games Store. As well as subscriptions services, plus there were DLC releases for the title.
