Remedy Entertainment Ltd.

Overview

Remedy Entertainment Ltd. is a Finnish development studio founded in 1995 and based in Espoo. Many of the founding members were previously part of the demo scene group Future Crew.

The studio's first game was the top-down racing shooter Death Rally (1996), followed by the two Max Payne games (2001 and 2003) featuring a titular protagonist in a story of hard-boiled revenge. The game popularised the use of bullet time in games, a technique best known from The Matrix movies, mixed with action sequences reminiscent of John Woo movies, but entirely set in against film noir backdrop. After having sold the movie options in 2001, a film based on the story starring Mark Wahlberg was eventually released in 2008. Max Payne 3 is in development, but it is designed by Rockstar Vancouver and the series writer Sam Lake is not involved.

The company released its fourth game, the action thriller Alan Wake, in 2010. Despite having released only four games in its relatively long history, the studio does fine as all of their titles have been received very well, both by the press and in sales numbers. Alan Wake was the studio's first title not initially released on the PC. It remained an Xbox 360 exclusive for two years and had a disappointing start in sales, although according to Remedy team leader Oskari Häkkinen the sales continued well post-launch. In 2012 the PC version was made available with a number of tweaks and the studio also released the more action-focused spin-off Alan Wake's American Nightmare as an Xbox 360 XBLA game.

The studio is responsible for the popular benchmark application 3DMark. Initially created as Final Reality in 1997, Remedy soon established the separate company Futuremark Oy, referencing the demo group's name, to handle the application. In January 2008 Futuremark established its own game development studio as Futuremark Games Studio.

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