Alan Wake 2 studio Remedy is slapping Larian publishing lead Michael Douse on the wrist, while Douse is slapping Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney on the wrist, while Sweeney is patting himself on the back for prioritizing good deals for gamers.
That's a lot of flapping around, so let's take it step-by-step. Earlier this week, Sweeney made a post on Bluesky responding to claims that giveaways on the Epic Games Store result in more Steam purchases, saying, "gamers and developers win by having more options and better deals." Douse then reacted to Sweeney's apparently blithe philosophy, saying, "this altruistic pro-developer talk doesn't sit well when Remedy seemingly went into financial crisis because they couldn't tap Steam for AW2 sales suffering potentially hundreds of millions in lost revenue." Now, Remedy itself has something to say.
"Hi," the official Remedy account begins on Bluesky. "There would be no Alan Wake 2 without Epic Publishing. The publishing deal with Epic was very fair to Remedy."
The developer continues, "While these complex deals can often take even a year to reach their conclusion, and may not always be fair to the developer, this one was. And it only took months to get done. Epic Games was, and is, an excellent partner to us. Steam or no Steam."
In October, Remedy's CEO Tero Virtala volunteered to leave the position after nearly 10 years following shooter FBC: Firebreak's underwhelming sales.
