Just shy of two weeks after launching its 'bold gambit' to save the multiplayer shooter FBC: Firebreak, Remedy says the game is still underperforming, to the point that the studio has issued a "profit warning" for 2025 and says it's going to eat a big loss on the whole thing.
The Control spinoff shooter FBC: Firebreak stumbled badly at launch, putting up a peak concurrent player count on Steam of just under 2,000 on release day and quickly slumping to under 100 less than a month later. Remedy fired out some quick patches and committed to more significant changes, the first of which went live near the end of September. That sparked a small bump in the concurrent player count, but it quickly slumped back down to double-digit numbers.
Remedy's next quarterly financial report is set for October 29, but it's not waiting until then to deliver the bad news. "In its 2025 half-year financial report, Remedy reported that FBC: Firebreak’s launch-phase consumer sales underperformed," the studio said in today's update. "After the launch, the company rapidly developed the game based on player feedback and released multiple updates.
"On September 29, Remedy released the first Major Update titled Breakpoint for FBC: Firebreak, which brought significant changes to the game’s core experience. Despite improved player and sales metrics after the update, sales have not reached Remedy’s internal targets."
As a result of FBC: Firebreak's "weak sales," Remedy will eat a non-cash impairment of €14.9 million—essentially, most of what it cost to develop and distribute the game. And while the studio had previously forecast that its revenues and operating profit (EBIT—earnings before interest and taxes) would increase from the previous year, and more importantly that its operating profit would be positive, it now expects revenues to be up but operating profit "to be negative and below the previous year."
"While we balance future investments to the title, we continue developing and improving the game in line with our updated long-term sales forecast," Remedy CEO Tero Virtala said, which suggests to me that future "major updates" may be dropped. Which would be a shame, but understandable too: I like Control, and I'd really like to see FBC: Firebreak turn things around, but pouring major development resources into an effort for a few dozen people just isn't sustainable over the long run.
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