Remedy announced today via press release that they, along with publishing partner Tencent, have decided to cancel the game project known as Kestrel. Kestrel was an initiative within Remedy to explore new ongoing multiplayer gaming experiences built using the Unreal engine. A notable departure from the studio’s usual practice, as its in-house technology, dubbed Northlight Engine, would not be used.
“Codename Kestrel showed early promise, but the project was still in its early concept stage. Our other projects have advanced well and are moving to the next stages of development, and increasing focus on them provides us with benefits. We can reallocate talented Kestrel developers to these other game projects, and many of our support functions get additional focus on their operations. This is yet another means to ensure that our game projects continue advancing well.” said Remedy CEO Tero Virtala.
Kestrel was formally known as Vanguard and announced in late 2018. It caught wind among fans, as Remedy has never released a multiplayer game before. The goal was to adapt the free-to-play model in combination with Remedy’s strong suits; interesting worlds and strong characters. However, After completing the proof-of-concept phase, the project underwent a thorough evaluation, leading to the decision to reboot it as Kestrel and ditch the free-to-play model.
Unfortunately, despite this effort, the reboot did not yield the desired results. Consequently, Project Condor is now Remedy’s sole multiplayer game in development.
