Why Remedy Entertainment built FBC Firebreak around the player's schedule, not the other way aroundWhy Remedy Entertainment built FBC Firebreak around the player's schedule, not the other way aroundWhy Remedy Entertainment built FBC Firebreak around the player's schedule, not the other way around

'Too many games ask too much of their players, especially in the multiplayer space.'

Picture of Alessandro Fillari

Alessandro Fillari , Contributor

May 14, 2025

6 Min Read

The player character looks down at rushing Hiss creatures in first-person view.

Image via Remedy Entertainment.

At a Glance

Remedy's FBC Firebreak is the studio's first live service multiplayer game—a risky genre to enter in 2025.
Many recent live service games have collapsed due to intense competition and high user acquisition costs.
Game director Mike Kayatta says Remedy's strategy is to let players set their own progression pace, and not drive 'FOMO.'

Remedy Entertainment has a history of being experimental with genre favorites like Alan Wake 2 and Control, but largely sticking to the (comparatively) safe waters of premium single-player games. Now Remedy is using the setting of Control as a launching pad for a live service co-op shooter called FBC Firebreak, their first crack at an online co-op game about contending with The Oldest House following a new lockdown.

Producing an online live service game these days is an increasingly risky business that many developers have struggled with . A key factor is that playing a live service game and keeping up with the content and other players is time-consuming—and only so many games can operate within that space at a given time. With that, the developers at Remedy Entertainment have built their take on an online live service game that not only allows players to tune the activities to match their pace, but also offer a way for players to take in as much as they want when they want.

In a chat with Game Developer, game director Mike Kayatta explained that Remedy is expanding the 'Remedy Connected Universe' further, while also building an online co-op game that's all about getting players right into the action and progressing at their own pace—all to build a sustainable live service that can attract players without plenty of time on their hands, and how they're ensuring players who don't have a lot of free time won't feel left behind.

An online game built around the player's schedule

In FBC Firebreak, squads of 3 players are tasked with completing various missions within The Oldest House—the extradimensional office building from the original Control—using jerry-rigged equipment and weapons to contain rogue Objects of Power or halt the invasion of the otherworldly monsters known as the Hiss. FBC Firebreak stands out in the live service space by providing more surreal objectives, like a mission called "Paper Chase," where players hunt supernatural sticky notes.

According to Kayatta, FBC Firebreak and its first-person, co-op-driven gameplay have been long brewing at Remedy. The concept itself stretches back to the original's conceit of contending with a setting that's actively working against players.

"One of my favorite pieces of Control concept art is of an FBC employee trying to play a game of pool, but the floor has shifted one end of the table just enough to ruin his game. This is pretty much how we think about the Oldest House in FBC: Firebreak," said the game director. "It's a powerful and mysterious building, yes, but there's also a certain level of canonical 'grounded absurdity,' it produces that's perfect for our type of experience."

A screenshot from FBC Firebreak where players chase rogue sticky notes.

Image via Remedy Entertainment.

"But even aside from those tonal opportunities, the House's shifting and unknowable nature, and the fact that it can connect to other dimensions, gives us all the room we'll ever need to do what's best for Firebreak without violating what makes Control, Control."

On the surface, the concept of FBC Firebreak recalls similar efforts from other developers attempting a stand-alone multiplayer game based on a single-player experience, another example being the upcoming Elden Ring: Nightreign. What makes FBC Firebreak particularly interesting is that it's not only leveraging the weirdness of the Control setting, but it's also an online game that seeks to remedy (pun intended) a growing problem with live-service games. Simply put, there's never enough time to play all the games out there while meeting the investments they expect from players.

Kayatta stated that FBC Firebreak was all about removing the familiar pain points and sense of FOMO found in online games. To them, the Control spin-off aimed to be a game that players could play "on their terms, and not on the games."

Amusingly, Kayatta said the team at Remedy took inspiration from their own busy schedules as game developers, studying the pace of how they kept up with modern online games.

FBC Firebreak lets players set their own progression pace

The developers of FBC Firebreak seek to solve the live-service dilemma with two solutions. First, all players can unlock key weapons and upgrades for their Crisis Kits (the game's take on class types), all from playing the game's set of missions and collecting resources. As players rank up their Requisitions—the game's take on the unlock system—they can spend points to unlock whatever they like, which includes new weapons, kit upgrades, and other add-ons to modify their loadouts.

The second solution, and most interesting to FBC Firebreak's structure, is the customizable objectives and encounter difficulties. Before each job, the team leader can tune the enemy variety and spawn rate to different intensity levels while also setting the number of objectives needed to clear the mission.

This means players can can have a mission with limited objectives but high enemy frequency, presenting a one-stage encounter with an onslaught of enemies. Conversely, they can customize the same mission to have a larger set of objectives, but with a lower frequency of enemies, making it more of an atmospheric, task-focused mission that culminates in a boss encounter.

A group of Federal Bureau of Control agents in FBC Firebreak.

Image via Remedy Entertainment.

"With a multiplayer game, it's important to consider how your game slots into people's lives," he said. "In co-op, especially, friend groups are stepping in with an unpredictable set of needs: How experienced is each group member? How much time do they have? Are they treating the game session like a phone call, where they just want something to do in the background while talking about something personal?"

"And you can't solve this for a player forever because the same person who wants to zone out one night for thirty minutes sometimes turns around and wants to hyper-coordinate for two hours the next night. This goes back to putting the game on the players' terms instead of ours; we wanted to give you those controls so that Firebreak can meet you where you are on any given day."

FBC Firebreak's approach to challenge and tuning of the experience is flexible by design, which feels like an oddity among other games that push players towards timed battle passes or monthly events.

According to Kayatta, building the game's structure and more flexible approach to progression was all about removing potential barriers that so many other live service games have, to provide an online game that players of whatever time investment can get something out of. Remedy axed other popular live service features like dense statistics (think damage, buff, and debuff percentages) because it made players care about "min-maxing and tracking metas."

"That in turn, can create barriers to people who don't want to be pressured into thinking about anything that's not directly in front of them," he said.

It's an unconventional strategy to drive retention by asking players for less engagement, but Kayatta said targeting those busy everyday players will be key to FBC Firebreak's success.

"We just wanted to make a game that players without a lot of time could enjoy, which feels like it describes a lot of gamers these days," he concluded. "Some people lose their time to work or to their kids. Others are among the hundreds of incredible games destroying their backlogs. Some poor suckers, like me, lose time to both."

"Too many games ask too much of their players, especially in the multiplayer space."

About the Author

Alessandro Fillari

Contributor

Alessandro Fillari is a writer/editor who has covered the games, tech, and entertainment industries for more than 12 years. He is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

See more from Alessandro Fillari

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