Alan Wake and Control developer Remedy Entertainment has cancelled its mysterious multiplayer project Kestrel to focus on already established franchises.
Kestrel was "a premium game with a strong cooperative multiplayer component" in development with Chinese publisher Tencent. Remedy said its other projects — which include remakes of Max Payne 1 and 2, Control 2, and a multiplayer spin-off from Control called Condor — are progressing well and the resources going into Kestrel could therefore be better spent on those.
"Codename Kestrel showed early promise but the project was still in its early concept stage," said Remedy CEO Tero Virtala. "Our other projects have advanced well and are moving to the next stages of development, and increasing focus on them provides us with benefits.
"We can reallocate talented Kestrel developers to these other game projects, and many of our support functions get additional focus on their operations. This is yet another means to ensure that our game projects continue advancing well. I want to thank our Kestrel development team. Though we decided to discontinue the project for wider Remedy benefits, our team has done good work and provided us with valuable learnings."
Kestrel had previously shown signs of development trouble as Remedy announced a "reboot" in November 2023, changing it from a free-to-play game to a full, premium project. Kestrel would "lean more into Remedy’s core strengths and be built on many of the features, assets, and themes already designed for Vanguard,” Remedy said at the time.
Condor will now be the only multiplayer game in development at the studio, with this one set to be a four-player, cooperative, "player versus environment" game. Little else has been said about the project, but it will seemingly get a development boost from the employees leaving the cancelled Kestrel behind.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
