Alan Wake is finally back in the hands of its original creator. The Stephen King-inspired character, and his game series had been the property of Microsoft for the past decade, and that company obviously had no intention of doing anything with the franchise. So, Alan Wake fans had a lot to be happy about when it was announced today that the publishing rights have reverted back to those of Remedy's.
Alan Wake hasn't been seen in action since 2012's Alan Wake's American Nightmare, which continued the story of the original game but didn't really give any meaningful insight or resolution to the original game's story. While it's nice to see the IP back with its developer, fans of Alan Wake may be disappointed to hear that a new game still doesn't seem to be on the horizon.
Remedy's board of directors made the announcement earlier today in a statement that not only detailed the acquisition of Alan Wake, but it also provided information on the profit gained by Remedy as well. The company picked up 2.5 million euros as a result of royalties from games they'd published before, including Alan Wake.
However, the statement also slips in a detail about this chunk of change that seems to indicate that an Alan Wake sequel isn't currently being developed. The statement declares that "this one-time income does not significantly affect Remedy's full year result, because as previously reported, the Company continues to invest in developing new games." Judging by that statement, it would seem that Remedy is busy working on new properties, so going back to the Alan Wake well is not currently one of their priorities.
This isn't really that surprising, considering that Remedy is hard at work on finishing Control, their latest mind-blowing slow-mo action extravaganza. Getting that game into top form for its upcoming August release date is definitely something that Remedy should be focusing on, as it looks very interesting and could even spawn a series of its own if it winds up being successful.
The real takeaway from this news is that Alan Wake is back at home, and Remedy is now free to publish the original game, as well as develop the long awaited follow up. Unfortunately for most Wake-heads out there, this doesn't necessarily mean that a new game is coming anytime soon. In fact, it doesn't even mean that a new Alan Wake game will happen at all. At least the option is there, and hopefully, one day we'll see Mr. Wake and his trusty flashlight back in action.
In the meantime, if you want to play Remedy's latest game, you don't need to wait much longer, as Control releases on August 27th, 2019 on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.