Remedy claims self-publishing model will help it 'think more commercially'

Alan Wake and Control developer Remedy claims self-publishing will drive the studio create games for a wider audience.

Outlining the company's five-year strategy during a Capital Markets Day presentation, Remedy CFO Santtu Kallionpää said ditching the publisher-funded model isn't just about securing a bigger chunk of revenue, but rather changing how Remedy approaches development.

"With the publisher funded model, the way Remedy has approached building our game concepts and business cases can be explained in the following way. [...] It starts by Remedy creating a captivating creative pitch and game concept, which includes a budget ask," said Kallionpää.

"Then we would have taken that out and sold it to a potential publisher. Once a publisher has bought the concept it is the publisher's responsibility to try and position [the title] and try to find a big enough audience for that game. Often publishers, especially if they are platform holders, have strategic platform interest, making them more willing to take risks on creative projects with unknown commercial upsides."

Kallionpää explained that with its previous titles, especially projects funded by publishers, Remedy didn't prioritize building a game with a huge target audience in mind. Instead, the company was more focused on creating a compelling concept that would attract interest (and investment) from prospective partners.

That's going to change. Now that Remedy intends to fund development and self-publish its titles (with help from select partners like Annapurna Pictures and Tencent), Kallionpää said the company will need to be "more strategic" when thinking about that intended audience. He explained the studio will need to understand from the get-go whether a concept will be capable of attracting a large playerbase, because it's now Remedy's "sole responsibility" to ensure its projects become commercially viable.

Remedy expects entire organization to buy into new publishing model

Kallionpää said Remedy's approach to self-publishing is shaped by three guiding principles. Firstly, the Finnish studio wants to build a "focused internal team" that owns the critical publishing areas and can achieve operational scale and global reach by working with key partners.

Secondly, he emphasized that Remedy will only publish its own games—largely because it wants "publishing to be closely integrated with our development teams throughout the life cycle of our games." Finally, he said everyone involved with production must understand "how we are publishing our games [and] how we are marketing out games," because all employees are driving towards the same end goal.

Kallionpää noted that Remedy is still expanding its self-publishing team, which is split into six key units each with their own leader, and hopes to grow the division to just over 20 people. If the company can realize its vision, Kallionpää believes Remedy will deliver lucrative hits and nurture expansive player communities.

"By publishing our games ourselves, we get to build closer integrations between game development and publishing to help align our games with a large enough target audience. We will also get closer closer to our players, as we are responsible for making the key decisions regarding updates and fixes based on player feedback and analytics," he added.

"And finally, self-publishing will push and motivate the whole organization to think more commercially, as we are solely responsible ourselves for the financial success or failure of our games."