The Finnish developers have canceled one of their games, and it’s the title that stood out from the rest in terms of genre and publisher; what will the studio behind the first two Max Payne titles, Alan Wake and Control, do now?

Remedy Entertainment has announced in a press release that it has dropped Project Kestrel, which was originally intended to be a free-to-play multiplayer title, but was converted into a paid (“premium”) title. In November, the project was renamed from Vanguard. With the new name came a co-founder in the form of Chinese tech giant Tencent (the company owns nearly 15% of Remedy!), but full development never started. The people working on the project will not be laid off, but they will be reassigned to other games, and the change will minimize hiring as other projects get more people.

Tero Virtala, CEO of Remedy, had this to say about the cancellation of Kestrel “Codename Kestrel showed early promise, but the project was still in the early concept stage. Our other projects have progressed well and are moving into the next stages of development, and increasing our focus on them provides us with benefits. We can reassign talented Kestrel developers to these other game projects, and many of our support functions get additional focus on their operations. This is another way to ensure that our game projects continue to progress well.

I would like to thank our Kestrel development team. Although we have decided to discontinue the project for the greater good of Remedy, our team has done a good job and provided us with valuable insights. I would also like to thank Tencent for their partnership so far. They have been very professional and supportive,” Virtala wrote.

Remedy Entertainment does other things. The first two Max Payne remakes, Control 2 and the project codenamed Condor are all in development, so it probably won’t be a big deal for the Finnish team not to go with the live service model.

Source: Insider Gaming, Remedy