Remedy Entertainment Oyj, known internationally as Remedy Entertainment Plc, is a Finnish video game developer located in Espoo. The company has created well-known games such as the first two games in the Max Payne series, Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and Control. Sam Lake, Remedy's creative director, has spoken for the company on many occasions.
The company was started in August 1995 by members of a group called Future Crew. Remedy made its first game, Death Rally, in a team member's basement. Apogee Software published this game and helped create the next title, Max Payne, which received high praise when it was released. A sequel, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, was later released by Rockstar Games. After working on the Max Payne series for seven years, Remedy decided to create a new game called Alan Wake. This game was delayed for so long that some people thought it might never be released. When it came out in 2010, published by Microsoft Game Studios, it gained a small but dedicated fanbase, though sales were not high enough to support a sequel. Remedy then started a new project called Quantum Break, which added more live-action elements to the Alan Wake universe. Since 2016, Remedy has worked on multiple projects at once, including Control and the single-player parts of CrossfireX. Remedy's most recent game, FBC: Firebreak, was released on June 17, 2025. The company is currently working on Control Resonant and a remake of the original Max Payne games.
Remedy Entertainment specializes in creating cinematic single-player action games with strong central characters. The company has a history of developing its own game engines, such as Northlight 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 people from different demoscene groups who made computer programs 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 demogroup realized their group could not become a commercial developer on its own. They decided to create a new company called Remedy to make video games and hired others with similar interests. Remedy’s founding members were Samuli Syvähuoko, Markus Mäki, Sami Nopanen, John Kavaleff, and Sami Vanhatalo. The company was officially created 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 combat. The game was renamed Death Rally, and Apogee Software released it in 1996. To add dialogue to the game, Remedy’s Petri Järvilehto asked a friend, Sam Lake, who was studying English literature at the University of Helsinki, for help. Lake stayed at Remedy and later became the studio’s creative director.
In 1997, Remedy also made a benchmarking tool called Final Reality. Later, the team split off to form a new company called Futuremark. In a letter dated July 9, 1998, LucasArts, through its lawyer John Sullivan, told Remedy it might take legal action, saying the Remedy logo looked similar to 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 replaced with a question mark. A new logo, designed by Kiia Kallio, was introduced on April 29, 1999.
After releasing Death Rally, Remedy began proposing new projects to Scott Miller. One idea was a space flight simulation game like Descent: FreeSpace, another was a racing game, and a third was an isometric shooter called Dark Justice. Miller decided to fund the shooter’s development, but only 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 suggested 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, features common in Hong Kong action films, to be central to the game. The team created their own game engine using their computer skills. Sam Lake became the game’s writer and added elements from crime fiction and film noir. The team wanted to use real-life photos for the game’s textures, but artists initially resisted. In 1999, the designers traveled from Finland to New York to study the city and take thousands of photos for the game. In 2000, the team spent most of the year improving the game’s graphics. After two delays, Max Payne was released in July 2001 and received critical praise for its focus on story and atmosphere, which was unusual for an action game. It sold more than seven million copies.
Apogee Software hired Rockstar Games to develop the console versions of Max Payne. Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive, paid $10 million for the game’s intellectual property rights. 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 creative freedom. The sequel’s development was faster than the original. The team reused many gameplay mechanics and expanded them. Sam Lake returned to write the script and studied screenwriting at Finland’s Theatre Academy to create a more complex story. His script was over 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 its prediction of lower revenue in 2004. Remedy stopped working on the franchise after Max Payne 2, but Rockstar consulted Remedy during the final stages of Max Payne 3’s development.
After seven years on the Max Payne series, the team wanted to make something new. They tested different gameplay ideas to create a sandbox game, but limited resources made it hard to build an open world. They decided to focus on a linear experience 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. The team took a field trip to the Northwest and Crater Lake, taking more than 40,000 photos for the game’s environment. The game’s pre-production lasted over three years, and full development took about two years. During this time, the studio grew from 30 to 45 employees. Some media thought the game might become “vaporware” because it disappeared from public view for a long time after its announcement. Microsoft Game Studios became the game’s publisher after signing an exclusivity 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, developed with Nitro Games, was released in February 2012. The game sold over 3.2 million copies, but Remedy said it was not financially successful enough to fund a sequel. Unlike Max Payne, Alan Wake’s story was written to allow for future sequels. The company began planning Alan Wake 2. Some elements from Alan Wake 2 were used in Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, a 2012 standalone game on Xbox Live Arcade. 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 on a new project. Remedy had used transmedia storytelling in Alan Wake, and Microsoft wanted Remedy to expand the live-action part of their next game, Quantum Break. Pre-production 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 would be the best way to explore the concept.
Games developed
Remedy Entertainment created a game engine called Northlight Storytelling Engine, which was first used in the game Quantum Break. This engine is used on different types of devices. According to Lake, Remedy believed that storytelling was important in its earlier games, such as Max Payne and Alan Wake. However, the company felt it needed to create its own technology to better support storytelling. This decision was partly influenced by work on a canceled version of Alan Wake 2 in 2013. At the time, the game used the same engine as the original Alan Wake, which limited the team’s ability to tell stories effectively. Using the technology developed for Alan Wake 2, Remedy improved features that help with storytelling. These include highly detailed and realistic human faces and bodies that can be animated using motion capture. The engine also includes a system that makes graphics look more realistic by supporting global illumination, ray tracing, and particle lighting. Additionally, a real-time deterministic physics system was used. This system can calculate how objects interact in the environment, play those effects in real-time, or rewind to create large-scale interactive destruction.
Facilities
The team used a basement in the Westend district of Espoo, Finland, as a workspace for making its first games. According to Lake, mattresses were spread 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. The office also had a "development warehouse" that stored many items once 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 space for a motion capture studio floor that is four times larger than the original.
As of December 2019, Remedy had more than 250 employees from 30 different countries.
Culture and philosophy
The studio specializes in 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 games like Max Payne and Alan Wake. The games are designed to be easy to understand and relatable, aiming to appeal to a wide audience. The team wanted players to feel fully engaged in the worlds they created. They avoided themes such as "World War II, dragons, hardcore sci-fi, or women with tight leather outfits." The team focused on "movie realism," meaning the games should feel believable in real-world situations. Instead of drawing ideas from other video games, they took inspiration from movies, TV shows, and books to create something new for the video game industry. When making games, the team always started with the story, which shaped other parts of the game, such as gameplay. Most of the studio's games follow a set path, but in 2015, the team began exploring ideas like multiplayer gaming and open-ended gameplay. The studio used its own technology, including the Northlight Engine, and invested heavily in motion capture. They 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 to work on. The team also took on work-for-hire projects, such as developing the single-player part of CrossfireX. This strategy helps the company explore new genres and increase its popularity globally. Although the company plans to release games more often, Virtala emphasized that the quality of Remedy games would not decrease and that new games would still be released "rarely."
Recognition
GamesIndustry.biz named Remedy one of its 2019 People of the Year for the successful launch of Control, the company's first game after it went public. Hideo Kojima, who is known as the creator of the Metal Gear series, said he is a big fan of Control. He visited Remedy's studio in Finland during his 2019 trip.