How to explain a bad game launch

Or, at least, how Remedy’s CEO just explained FBC: Firebreak’s rough start

FBC: Firebreak. Screenshot: Remedy Entertainment

I had to stare at this new chart for a bit. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Here, you take a look, too…

Earlier this week, Remedy Entertainment (Alan Wake, Control) CEO Tero Virtala showed this chart during the company’s quarterly update to investors, as part of an effort to explain what has gone wrong with FBC Firebreak.

Firebreak launched on June 17. It is the newest game from Remedy, and their first co-op effort.

In March, when Virtala and I had discussed Remedy’s current projects, including Firebreak, he had been upbeat, of course.

But the game had a rough launch in June. It “underperformed,” Virtala said in written remarks to Remedy investors on Tuesday. “Commercially, we were unsatisfied with the launch-phase consumer sales.”

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So, he had this chart, which shows that the game’s earliest Day 1 user reviews on Steam—where Remedy hoped to sell a lot of copies—were awful.

At the start of day one, only 17% of Steam user reviews were positive, the chart showed. The reviews were “exceptionally bad,” Virtala remarked.

One of Firebreak’s big problems is the early part of the game. It’s slow. It’s constricting. Early on, it’s not very fun.

Remedy said that, not me.

“The early experience of the game just didn’t feel good, and led to players quitting early and also rating the game bad,” Virtala told investors during a 50-minute briefing that followed the written earnings report.

“The game’s initial onboarding experience was very slow and partly confusing. And the mission structure that we had planned was too restrictive for the players.”

Firebreak’s first players bounced off the game quickly and slammed it in the Steam reviews, Virtala explained (He also floated a theory about geographically-based impatience with the game; more on that later).