Remedy Entertainment has canceled its multiplayer game, codenamed Kestrel, which was to be co-published with Tencent. The game, which was created from the remnants of an earlier free-to-play multiplayer cooperative game Vanguard, had turned into a premium cooperative multiplayer game but seemingly didn’t progress quickly enough.
Kestrel had only reached the early concept stage
Remedy CEO Tero Virtala confirmed that the game, codenamed Kestrel, “was still in its early concept stage” despite showing “early promise.” Meanwhile, other Remedy games had “advanced well and are moving to the next stages of development,” so the developer chose to increase focus on those titles instead and cancel Kestrel.
Kestrel was to be Remedy’s first attempt at games as a service. Originally announced as Vanguard in 2021, the free-to-play, co-operative player-versus-environment shooter was seemingly rebooted in November 2023 as a premium game called Kestrel. Now that the game has been canceled, Remedy will reallocate its developers to other titles “to ensure that our game projects continue advancing well.”
Those projects are numerous and are spread across several of Remedy’s IPs. They include Codename Condor, a 4-player cooperative PvE multiplayer game that is set to expand on the world that was introduced in Control. Sticking with that IP, there is also a “full-blown sequel” to Control that is currently called Codename Heron. Due to a deal with 505 Games, the game has a bigger budget and will be larger as a result.
Then there are remakes of Max Payne and Max Payne 2, which Remedy has previously confirmed will have entered full production by the end of June 2024. Finally, there are two DLC expansions for Alan Wake 2, which are due to be released later this year. Night Springs should be here relatively soon, while The Lake House only has a tentative 2024 release date.