Alan Wake 2 developer Remedy Entertainment and Tencent announced this week via press release that the studio has cancelled ‘Codename Kestrel’ in a move designed to narrow its focus to other games in its portfolio.
Developed by Remedy and both co-published and co-financed by Tencent, Codename Kestrel was to be a premium co-op multiplayer game that begun development in November 2023 following the reboot of another codenamed project titled Vanguard. The original deal with Tencent was signed in 2021, but the reboot that took the project from a free-to-play to premium title was initiated in response to a “rapidly changing free-to-play market.” Kestrel was in the early concept stages of development by a small team at Remedy.
Remedy CEO Tero Virtala offered his thanks to the development team as part of the statement:
“I want to thank our Kestrel development team. Though we decided to discontinue the project for wider Remedy benefits, our team has done good work and provided us with valuable learnings. I also want to thank Tencent for their partnership so far. They have been very professional and supportive.”
The press release noted that while Kestrel “showed early promise” the studio’s other projects have been progressing well and this move allows Remedy to continue to build on that progress by shifting Kestrel’s developers to these other projects.
