Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind Alan Wake and Control, recently launched the company’s first live-service game: FBC: Firebreak. But the game’s first two weeks haven’t been great, with low player counts and balance issues. Remedy is aware and working to not only improve FBC, but also support it for the long haul.
Released on June 17, FBC: Firebreak landed on consoles and PC and launched on day one on Game Pass and PS Plus. The online FPS is set in the world of Control and tasks players with working together to fight off hordes of enemies while completing objectives. Think Left 4 Dead 2, but with more sticky notes, missions, and a full progression system. However, that progression system is getting a big overhaul in update 1.3, just one of a few updates Remedy has pushed out to improve the game based on fan feedback.
Update 1.3, out now on all platforms, rebalances how perks work in FBC. Perks are a key part of the game’s progression, letting players unlock new abilities—like being able to get rid of status effects by jumping—and changing how you play the game. Previously, they were hard to unlock as you had to collect resources, some of which the game did a poor job of highlighting. But now some lower-level perks are cheaper to unlock while some higher-level ones cost more resources. The idea, as Remedy explained in a blog post, is to get people using more perks, more quickly, and then making it easier to unlock higher-level options as they play more.
It sounds good to me, someone who is still playing FBC: Firebreak on and off between other games. The last few updates have done a great job of improving the game, but looking at what publicly available data there is, like SteamDB’s player count charts, FBC seems to be struggling.
Remedy was disappointed by FBC’s launch
In a new interview, Remedy communications director Thomas Puha talked to GameSpot about the launch of FBC, its player count, and its future. And he was frank and honest, saying “We aren’t naïve; we had hoped for a better launch.”
But Puha says the team is “super-motivated to continue building the game” and is using player feedback to guide future updates. He also pushed back on people using FBC’s low Steam player count as evidence that the new shooter has flopped.
“Steam is a very important part of the business of FBC: Firebreak,” said Puha. “The Steam [active player count] is a very easy statistic to dig up, but it isn’t everything.”
As for the future of FBC, Puha reiterated Remedy’s plans to add two new missions to the game later this year as well as some new, undisclosed features. But he also acknowledged that some plans have changed based on the rough launch.
“We’ve rearranged some of our development plans, prioritized certain features, and deprioritized others already during the week of the game being live,” said Puha. “The game is live, players’ feedback comes in, things will change, that’s what we expected.”
“It’s exciting that the game starts evolving now that it’s live,” continued Puha, “Remedy is fully committed to FBC: Firebreak. We are all curious to see what it will be like later in the year.”
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