Remedy CEO Tero Virtala Replaced Effective Immediately After 'FBC: Firebreak's' Financial Failure
Tero Virtala, the CEO of Remedy Entertainment, the developer of Alan Wake, Max Payne, FBC Firebreak, Quantum Break, and Control, was replaced effective immediately.
In a press release Remedy Entertainment announced that the Board of Directors and Tero Virtala “mutually agreed” to have him “step down from his position as the company’s CEO with immediate effect.”
Markus Mäki, one of Remedy’s founders who was acting as the Chairman of the Board, has been appointed as interim CEO.
With Mäki becoming the interim CEO, he stepped down from his position as Chairman of the Board. The Board then elected Henri Österlund as the new Chairman of the Board. He’s been a member of the Board since 2017.
While Virtala has stepped down from his position he has agreed to “continue at the service of the company during an agreed transition period to support the handover of CEO duties.”
“I want to thank Tero Virtala for his substantial contribution to the management of Remedy since 2016. I personally thank Tero for good cooperation and wish him all the best for the future,” said Remedy’s interim CEO Markus Mäki.
The company has already initiated search for a new CEO.
Virtala had been the CEO since August 2016 and most recently oversaw a disastrous period for the company. Most recently it released FBC: Firebreak, a three-player cooperative first-person shooter, to dismal results. The game released in June and only hit a peak concurrent player count of just 1,992. In the past 24 hours it only hit a peak count of 34.
In its August financial report, Remedy had hoped that Steam would be its “primary consumer sales channel on PC” and admitted it “underperformed.” However, the company noted that it did reach 1 million players in its first 10 days mainly from Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 users, but it had “high early player drop-offs and an influx of negative reviews” due to “the game’s initial onboarding experience and mission structure.”
The company admitted, “Commercially we were unsatisfied with the launch-phase consumer sales of FBC: Firebreak.”
It went from bad to worse. Not only were player counts down, but the game was not generating any significant revenue. The company announced in a note earlier this month that it had “weak sales” and the company was lowering “its long-term sales forecast for the game.”
Furthermore, Remedy announced that it was taking on a “non-cash impairment of of EUR 14.9 million, representing a majority of the game’s capitalized development costs and allocated purchased publishing and distribution rights.”
Was FBC Firebreak more woke crap?