Remedy Entertainment, a Finnish video game developer based in Espoo, is known for creating several popular games. These include the first two games in the Max Payne series, Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and Control. Sam Lake, who leads the creative direction at Remedy, has spoken on behalf of the company many times.
Remedy was founded in August 1995 by members of a group called Future Crew from the demoscene. The company’s first game, Death Rally, was made in a team member’s basement. Apogee Software published Death Rally and helped develop the next game, Max Payne, which received praise from critics when it was released. A sequel, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, was released by Rockstar Games. After seven years of working on the Max Payne series, Remedy decided to create a new game called Alan Wake. This game was delayed for a long time, leading some to believe it might not be released. When it was finally released in 2010 by Microsoft Game Studios, it gained a loyal fanbase, though sales were not high enough to support a sequel. Remedy then worked on a new project called Quantum Break, which expanded the use of live-action elements from Alan Wake.
Since 2016, Remedy has worked on multiple projects at the same time. At that time, they were developing three games, including Control and the single-player parts of CrossfireX. Their most recent game, FBC: Firebreak, was released on June 17, 2025. Currently, they are working on Control Resonant and a remake of their original Max Payne games.
Remedy Entertainment is known for creating cinematic action games with strong central characters. The company has a history of developing its own game engines, such as Northlight, which was used for Quantum Break. Remedy grew quickly during the 2010s. It became a public company in 2017 and moved to a larger office in Espoo in 2018. In 2022, Remedy opened a second studio in Stockholm.
History
The company was started by members of different computer graphics groups who created special effects for personal computers and Commodore International's Amiga PCs. In 1994, inspired by Bloodhouse and Terramarque, Finland's first commercial video game developers, members of the Future Crew group realized their group could not become a commercial developer on its own. They decided to form a new company called Remedy to make video games and hired others with similar backgrounds. The founding members were Samuli Syvähuoko, Markus Mäki, Sami Nopanen, John Kavaleff, and Sami Vanhatalo. The company was officially started on August 18, 1995. At that time, most members were in their early twenties. They made their first video game in the basement of Syvähuoko's parents' house in Espoo's Westend district.
The team began working on a racing game, first called HiSpeed, based on their first idea. Scott Miller, who started Apogee Software, gave creative advice and suggested the game should include car battles. The game was renamed Death Rally, and Apogee Software released it in 1996. To add dialogue for the game, Remedy's Petri Järvilehto asked his friend Sam Lake, who was studying English literature at the University of Helsinki, for help. Lake stayed with Remedy and later became the studio's creative director.
In 1997, Remedy also made a tool called Final Reality to test computer performance. Later, the team started a new company called Futuremark. In a letter dated July 9, 1998, LucasArts, through their lawyer John Sullivan, told Remedy they might take legal action, saying the Remedy logo looked like part of LucasArts' logo. At that time, Remedy was already changing its logo because the old one did not represent the company well. The old logo was removed from the website in July, and a question mark was used instead. The new logo, designed by Kiia Kallio, was shown on April 29, 1999.
After releasing Death Rally, Remedy began sharing ideas for their next project with Scott Miller. One idea was a space flight game like Descent: FreeSpace, another was a racing game, and a third was an isometric shooter called Dark Justice. Miller agreed to fund the shooter's development if the game had a strong main character like Duke Nukem, 3D graphics, and a better name. He thought Dark Justice was too "dark" and "adult." The team tried names like "Dick Justice" and "Max Heat," which they trademarked for $20,000, before choosing "Max Payne." Petri Järvilehto, the game's lead designer, wanted bullet time and slow motion, like in Hong Kong action movies, as the main feature. The team created their own game engine because of their experience with computer graphics. Sam Lake became the game's writer and added elements from crime stories and film noir. The team wanted to use real photos for the game's textures, but artists at first disagreed. In 1999, the designers traveled from Finland to New York to study the city and took thousands of photos for the game. Most of 2000 was spent improving the game's graphics. After two delays, Max Payne was released in July 2001 and received praise for its focus on story and atmosphere, which was unusual for action games. It sold more than seven million copies.
Apogee Software gave Rockstar Games the task of making the console versions of Max Payne. Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two Interactive, paid $10 million for the rights to the Max Payne franchise. Rockstar still owns the rights to Max Payne as of 2021. As part of the deal, Remedy agreed to make a sequel. Take-Two gave Remedy freedom to create the game. The sequel took less time to make than the original. The team reused many gameplay features and expanded them. Sam Lake returned to write the script and studied screenwriting at the Theatre Academy of Finland to create a more detailed story. His script was more than 600 pages, five times longer than the original. Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne was released in October 2003, 27 months after the first game. However, it sold poorly. Take-Two said the game's weak sales contributed to lower revenue predictions for 2004. Remedy stopped working on the franchise after Max Payne 2, but Rockstar consulted Remedy when Max Payne 3 was nearly finished.
After seven years working on the Max Payne series, the team wanted to create something new. They tested different gameplay ideas to make a sandbox game. However, because of limited resources, they decided to focus on a linear game instead. The company was inspired by Stephen King's books, the TV show Twin Peaks, ghost towns in the American Northwest, and tornado patterns. They invited a landscape architect to help design the game's environment. The team went on a trip to the Northwest and Crater Lake, taking more than 40,000 photos for the game's setting. The game was in planning for more than three years, and full development lasted about two years. During this time, the studio grew from 30 to 45 employees. Some media thought the game might not be finished, as it was not widely talked about for a long time after its announcement. Microsoft Game Studios became the game's publisher after making an exclusive deal with Remedy. The game, Alan Wake, was released for the Xbox 360 in May 2010 and received positive reviews. Remedy pushed for a PC version, which Microsoft approved in mid-2011. The PC version, made with Nitro Games, was released in February 2012. The game sold more than 3.2 million copies, but Remedy said in 2013 it did not make enough money to fund a sequel. Unlike Max Payne, Alan Wake's story was written to allow for future sequels. The company began making prototypes for Alan Wake 2. Some parts of these prototypes were used in Alan Wake's American Nightmare, a 2012 standalone game with a shorter development time. Together, both games sold more than 4.5 million copies by March 2015.
The company showed its prototype for Alan Wake 2 to different publishers. Microsoft was not interested in making a sequel to Alan Wake but wanted to work with Remedy again on a new project. Remedy had used transmedia storytelling in Alan Wake, and Microsoft hoped Remedy would expand the live-action part in their next game, Quantum Break. Planning for Quantum Break began in 2011, with about 100 people working on it. The idea of quantum physics came from Alan Wake's TV show called Quantum Suicide. The team thought time travel was the best way to tell the story.
Games developed
Remedy Entertainment created the Northlight Storytelling Engine, a game engine that works on multiple platforms. This engine was first used in the game Quantum Break. According to Lake, Remedy believed that storytelling was important in its earlier games, such as Max Payne and Alan Wake. However, the team felt it was necessary to develop its own technology to improve storytelling. This decision was partly influenced by work on a canceled prototype for Alan Wake 2 around 2013. At the time, the prototype used the same engine as Alan Wake, which limited the team's ability to create complex stories. Using technology from the Alan Wake 2 project, Remedy added features to support its storytelling goals. These include highly detailed and realistic human faces and bodies that can be animated using motion capture. The engine also includes a system that creates realistic lighting and effects, such as global illumination, ray tracing, and particle lighting. Additionally, a real-time physics system was used to calculate how objects interact, allowing for realistic environmental effects, playback in real time, or rewinding to create large-scale destruction.
Facilities
The team used a basement in the Westend district of Espoo, Finland, as a workspace for creating its first games. Lake said that mattresses were scattered across the basement floor because team members sometimes slept there. Before 2018, Remedy used a four-story office in Espoo that included a café, a sauna, a bar, and a gym. It also had a "development warehouse" that stored many items previously used by the studio, such as photos and graphic novels (for Max Payne), clothes (for Alan Wake), old computers, design documents, demo video tapes, and early scripts. As the studio grew larger, it moved to a newer and bigger office in Espoo in May 2018. The new office has a motion capture studio floor that is four times larger than the previous one.
As of December 2019, Remedy employed more than 250 people from 30 different countries.
Culture and philosophy
The studio focuses on creating cinematic single-player action games. Managing director Matias Myllyrinne explained that the studio’s games always feature a strong main character, as seen in titles like Max Payne and Alan Wake. The games are designed to be easy to understand and relatable, aiming to appeal to as many players as possible. The team wanted players to feel completely engaged in the worlds they created. Matias noted that the studio avoids themes such as "World War II, dragons, hardcore sci-fi, or women with tight leather outfits." The team also aimed for "movie realism," meaning the games should feel realistic and believable in the real world. However, the team often took ideas from movies, TV shows, and books instead of other video games, as they wanted to create something new for the video game industry. When developing games, the team always started by writing the story, which influenced other parts of the game, such as gameplay. Most of the company’s games follow a linear structure, but Remedy began exploring new ideas like multiplayer gaming and open-ended gameplay around 2015. The studio typically used its own in-house technology, including the Northlight Engine, to create its games. They also invested heavily in motion capture technology and partnered with Nvidia to improve the motion capture process.
Starting in 2016, the company began working on multiple projects at the same time, with each game having a shorter development time. This helped the team become more financially stable and allowed employees to choose which projects they wanted to work on. The team also started taking on work-for-hire projects, such as developing the single-player portion of CrossfireX. This is part of Remedy’s plan to explore new genres and increase its popularity in different regions worldwide. Although the company plans to release games more often, Virtala emphasized that the quality of Remedy games would not decrease, and a new Remedy game release would still be rare.
Recognition
In 2019, GamesIndustry.biz honored Remedy Entertainment as one of its People of the Year for the successful release of Control, the company's first game launched after its initial public offering (IPO). Additionally, Hideo Kojima, the creator of the Metal Gear video game series, stated that he is a big fan of Control. During his 2019 trip to Finland, Kojima visited Remedy's studio.