Welcome to the very first Capital Markets Day of Remedy Entertainment. I'm your host, Lauri Haavisto, and I'm also the Investor Relations Manager here at Remedy. During the next two hours, I have the pleasure of introducing the executive team of Remedy. They will take us behind the scenes of the company and answer three simple questions: How do we develop games? How do we sell them? How do we keep our players and employees happy? We will have short Q&A sessions after each presentation, so please send your questions and comments by using the feedback form on the webcast page. Now it's time to meet our first presenter. He has nearly two decades of experience from managing game studios, and I can't wait to find out what he will tell us for Remedy's plans for the next five. Please welcome to the stage CEO Tero Virtala.
Hello everyone. My name is Tero Virtala. I'm the CEO of Remedy. At Remedy, we are starting our next growth phase. As a background to our future direction, let's have a look on who we are and what makes Remedy so special. We are a category-defining creative super developer. What do we mean with this? We have the rare skills of creating world-class gaming brands. Out of these brands, we can develop distinctive, benchmark-setting, high-quality games. We have the organization and teams to develop multiple high-quality games at the same time, which is quite different from many of the world's other AAA developers. At Remedy, we have always been a highly appreciated partner. With some of our future games, we continue to collaborate with world-class publishing partners.
Now we have developed to a stage when we are also building abilities to self-finance and self-publish some of our future games. At the heart of Remedy have always been and are highly creative and empowered people and teams. We are an attractive home to these professionals. While we do all this, we are a profitable growth company who is able to manage well its risk as well. When we then look at the games Remedy is known for, high-quality PC and console games, Max Payne, Alan Wake, Quantum Break, Control, games that have won the hearts of millions of gamers and alongside many industry awards as well. All these games have pushed the boundaries of creativity within our industry. They have built us new competencies, and game by game, they have been developing Remedy further as a company.
All these games, they do have selected common traits. Our creative strengths are based on our ability to imagine and create immersive worlds, interesting characters, memorable interactive stories around these characters in these worlds. All this is combined to highly polished action gameplay. You will later hear much more on this from our Creative Director, Sam Lake. On a company level, it's still good to note that these same creative skills are also the foundation for creating new brands, new franchises in any entertainment media. When we continuously keep on expanding and pushing the boundaries of our creativity, develop our skills, and create also new ones, we keep on building all the time new opportunities for our future games. Our creativity, the people behind that creativity, the games that they develop are at the core of what Remedy is.
What Remedy has been now almost for 25 years, or actually over 25 years now. In this long path, about three years ago, we started a bigger transformation. Until 2016, we typically had one bigger game development team always working on a one big game at a time. In the end of 2016, early 2017, we started to plan what would be the future Remedy, the Remedy for the next decade to come. In order to get to a sustainable long-term growth path where we could give even more career paths and opportunities for our creative talents, for Remedy more control of our future and ways to benefit more also on the successes that we would create. That transformation that we started was built on three key strategic guidelines.
First, we would continue creating games on top of our world-class strengths, but do it in a way that they would provide longer-lasting games, longer-lasting franchises. Operationally, we started transforming the company from a single project organization to a multi-project organization. While doing that, we would have the opportunity to work on selected world-class partner brands like Crossfire, but also to create and develop brands and games that we own. For the past three years' time, we have systematically been following these guidelines. Now, after a bit over three years, we can definitely say that the first phase of our growth strategy has been successfully completed. We have the multi-project organization in place. We have four game teams. We have almost 280 world-class talents, and we have a host of external partners, external talents working with us for our games.
During this time, we have developed Control in three years' time with a budget of approximately EUR 30 million, an industry award-winning game. That is truly an impressive achievement. We have also done two Crossfire projects. We have been investing into three brands that we own. We have been continuously strengthening our creative skills, technology skills, and production skills. As the aim was by the end of 2019, we did enter into the growth path in a profitable way, which had been our goal. Now when we are in this path, we intend to stay here. Despite the transformation and big changes that we have been going through, we have been taking care of our people and maintained a really good work atmosphere. All this has definitely built us a stronger basis than we have ever before had.
At the moment, we have four game teams developing five games, Control with five or five games, Crossfire with Smilegate, two unannounced games with Epic Games, and Vanguard, our multiplayer initiative. That is where Remedy is at the moment. From this point onwards, in order to discuss where we go from here, let's look at the global gaming market and how we see it developing. Video game market, a massive $160 billion market that keeps on growing. It keeps on growing in every geography and also in every main gaming platform. We at Remedy are focused on developing console and PC games for core gamers, or as we say it, big screen games for gamers. This means PC, PlayStation, Xbox, both current generation and of course the new generation, the next generation. Nintendo Switch has also grown to be a potential platform for us.
At the moment, there are a number of new subscription and streaming services that are marching on and opening up new avenues also for us. An additional important market development has also been how digital sales have overtaken physical. In digital stores, consumers have more choices, but this has also meant that high-quality games like Control keep on selling for a long time. Our Commercial Director, Johannes Paloheimo, will get back to you on this. In addition to these higher-level market developments, we see five additional trends that are very relevant to us. The market continues to grow and change. Now, stronger than ever before, new entrants are challenging the traditional dominant PC and console platforms. Yes, Microsoft and Sony just introduced the next generation of consoles that are pushing the bar, taking the industry further. On the PC side, Steam is strong and Steam is evolving.
Epic Games Store is also growing. New streaming platforms from big players like Google and Amazon are in the play. Subscription streaming services in every platform are developing and are growing. Many big players are building their future positions in this giant industry. Due to the growing and transforming industry, content is more important than it ever has been. Content is the key driver for new platform sales. Content is the key driver for user acquisition for any new services. There is high demand for new games. There is high demand for good development studios. Outside of the platform players, for big gaming publishers, IP ownership, content is a key long-term focus. Due to all this, yes, consolidation is just accelerating. The first phase of industry consolidation has been targeted to game developers. Games are in high demand.
Creating new high-quality development studios is slow and is difficult. Next, we are also expecting consolidation to start happening in the publisher space. There are also two key trends that more specifically affect games and also the type of games that Remedy will be making. First, PC and console games are becoming longer-lasting and longer engaging. With all the new services, all the new games, there is more and more battle for gamers' time and money. Games are focusing even more on retention, keeping the players longer time, and not just selling the main game, but when serving the players for a longer time, also aiming to maximize the lifetime value of the players. Playing together, watching, sharing, they keep on growing. As one result of all this, players are playing fewer games but spending more time and money in those games that they play.
This in part just highlights the fact that AAA games are still a hit-driven business. Despite the big market, it's not the big amount of games that succeed, but those that do can succeed in a truly big way. When we have been thinking our future direction, we analyzed all the AAA console games, all the relevant AAA console games from the last three years' time. Especially the games that sold more than 2 million units, it was only less than 70 games. Out of these games, about 40% were pure single-player games. When we started dissecting those in more detail and putting them into different segments, you could see that there are some giant budgets, mainly platform exclusive blockbusters like the amazing games that Sony has been making.
We are clearly seeing a trend that there are more and more big open-world games, but often they are from established big brands. We can see that there are those standout exceptions. Games that are meant for certain categories, and when they are really high-quality games, they get there, they provide something new for the category, they are taking the bar higher in there, and if the quality is good, they can succeed. When we look at the other games that are not within the 40% of the single-player games, it's good to note that there are very few pure multiplayer games. About 60% of the successful games combine single-player and multiplayer.
Where we come from, from expertise in the single-player, we can say that single-player continues to be a key element of big AAA successes of the future, but whatever that means, these games need to become longer engaging. Taking into consideration the current gaming market, where we believe it's going, what are the conclusions for us? First, we definitely have a strong basis to build our future on. We have high potential brand, we have the creativity, we have technology meant for our type of games that supports our creativity. We have good games already out there and in development. We have seen that we can attract and keep world-class talent and build great teams. We have the multi-project model that is now functional. Market has developed favorably to us. It keeps on growing.
Yes, the markets are crowded, but we have seen that good games can sell for years. We have multiple good partnership options, but also with the digitalization, the barrier to self-publishing is lower. We are aiming for bigger opportunities. Our games will step by step grow bigger and longer engaging. We will also seek ways how Remedy as a company and our games can capture more value. We do understand that there are great games out there. There are really good other companies as well. We will be smart in what we do and how we do it. Our other core management team members will shed more light on all of these topics. With all this, we are starting the next growth phase with ambitious but still realistic objectives.
Our objective is that by the year 2025, we have created several successful games and at least one major hit game, a game that reaches the global top-selling charts and keeps on succeeding also after that. As I have said, we have the unique rare creative skills. We can create the world's character stories that build the powerful brands. We will own at least three of these type of expanding strong game brands, and they all will have long-term hit game potential. We are all the time strengthening our commercial capabilities, and we will strengthen and build them to a point where we can select the right commercial model for each game, a model that best maximizes its value and its audience reach. For some games, it will mean self-financing and self-publishing. For some other games, it will mean working with world-class publishing partners.
Great people continue to be a key focus for us. We aim to be the most attractive gaming industry employer in Europe. We will reach these objectives while having year- on- year a profitable and growing business in which we have managed the risks. How will we do this? We have five strategic guidelines that we are following. These guidelines are then internally at Remedy broken down into more detailed development projects and action areas. We are building a portfolio of recognized growing game brands. We are creating bigger, longer engaging games in our immersive and expanding worlds. We are building further our commercial capabilities to maximize the potential that our games have and at the same time strengthening our position in the value chain. Production-wise, we have an iterative approach that game by game we go towards bigger games with very professional and scalable game productions.
We keep on investing our people to have empowered creative world-class teams and people. We are starting the next phase in our growth. All this is a natural step in our development. It builds on top of what we have already built in recent years. At the same time, this next phase will further strengthen our position as a category-defining creative super developer, a creative super developer that is starting its next growth phase. Thank you.
Thank you, Tero, for such a comprehensive presentation. I have a couple of questions for you. Let's start with a topic that has affected us all this year. How has the pandemic affected Remedy?
Definitely, it has affected. I think overall we have been able to adapt quite well.
As a gaming company, I think any gaming company has been in a fortunate position that people are spending more time at home, they are playing more games. Business-wise, we have had a certain, in a way, positive effect even in the sales. In our development, the projects have been proceeding well, so that's a good thing. Now when the situation has been becoming longer than anyone hoped originally, I think that some of the learnings that we have had that for those projects that are longer in the production, that are more in the execution phase where we know exactly what needs to be done and it's about implementation, there is in some projects even more efficiency and they are proceeding well.
For some earlier phase projects where more communication, more cross-discipline planning is needed, we are seeing that we need to keep on developing all the time, that it is not that easy as we maybe earlier thought. Definitely, as with any company, now when the situation has soon almost continued almost for one year, it is weighing on people. It is not easy for people. There are challenges. Actually, our HR Director, Mikaela Öberg, is going to discuss a bit more on this, that we have always supported our people and this has been one of the key focus areas also for us during this year.
A question we do get quite often from the investors: What is Remedy's approach with mergers and acquisitions?
As I just said, there is definitely an ongoing consolidation trend in our industry.
In a way, it's a two-way street because one way, yes, there is a lot of interest towards Remedy, but we have seen that as an independent company, there are still so many growth opportunities. So far, that's been our strategy, how we go on and seek in a way the next level in our growth and next opportunities ahead of us. Of course, when we are growing, we have so far chosen that our path is the organic growth, that we have the ability to attract talent, to build new game teams, to take our games to new platforms and expand them further. That is also at the moment still the main focus. Of course, we are keeping our eyes open. We have the multi-project model in use. Who knows what will happen in the years to come?
So far, we have a clear strategy that we are following and we believe that will provide us a lot of opportunities going to the future.
Sounds good. Thank you for the answers. Now, another question we get quite often. How much does Remedy get from a single copy of a game and why? Bringing logic to our value creation, please welcome to the stage Remedy CFO, Terhi Kauppi.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Terhi Kauppi and I'm the CFO for Remedy. I've been with the company two and a half years and I would say it's been a joyful journey. As Tero just explained, we want to run a profitable growth business with well-managed risks. There is a lot of future potential for us.
That is why I will discuss with you about the value generation drivers for Remedy as a creative super developer, why it is good to be in this industry and with this company. Let us start by taking a short look back. How did we end up where we are now? We have gotten the profitable growth track. We have been growing on a compounded annual growth rate of 21% in the past 10 years. We have always been profitable, which is quite an achievement in this industry. Our guidance for 2020 is to increase both our revenue and EBIT. Our latest release numbers are from the first half of 2020. They state the good level of revenue, EUR 17 million, and a margin of 19% for EBIT. We still expect the majority of the revenue and EBIT increase to come from this second half of 2020.
Traditionally, our profitability has been peaking along the game launches. In 2012, it was Alan Wake PC version, 2016 Quantum Break, and last year, 2019, we launched Control. This profitability pattern is about to change, and I will later in my presentation explain why. Next, take a look at how the multi-project model has shaped our revenue. We can see now, based on this illustration on our past year's revenue development, that the multi-project model has both contributed to the top-line growth of the revenue and acted as a risk balancer. Should there be one project or a product which is not that successful as we hoped, there are other streams that are compensating that. The different colors inside the pillars represent roughly the different revenue streams we are following internally. We do not have all the eggs in the same basket.
It is also important that these eggs are different in nature between each other, as explained next. Here are the three main clusters for revenue generation models for a video game developer. In the upper part is the subcontracting model, where there are subsequent projects with a partner, and on top of that, there is normally a royalty potential. In the middle part is the own IP partnering model. There it is normal that we receive the development fees during the project phase, and then there is additional revenue share potential. The general rule of thumb is that the more we receive the development fees during the project development time, the less is the potential for revenue share and vice versa. With a successful product, both of these streams can be significant. There is the self-publishing model, which we currently do not have.
There the possibilities for revenues are much higher since we get the full potential for that. On the other hand, there are no project development phase development fees received. There is more potential, but also more risks. Next, like Lauri promised, let's take a look at how actually the price a player pays for a Remedy game converts in our revenue. This example is based roughly on Control game. We can assume here that a player buys a game for EUR 20-EUR 70 somewhere in the world, in some platform, in some point of the time. There is a big variation in this. The largest variation comes from the discount campaigns. It's always almost going on somewhere. The latest season was Black Friday, and next season is the Christmas holiday season. The price elasticity for games is high.
Discounts drive up the volumes, but on the other hand, the sales happen at a lower average sales price. Other aspects affecting the pricing are geography and bundling. The geographical aspects can be visible, for example, in Russia and China, where the pricing level in general is lower. On the other hand, we can affect the pricing by bundling, for example, the main game and the DLC, the downloadable content, into one new product. There are the deductions. First of all, there is the VAT. The percentage varies across the globe. For example, in the U.S., it can be 0%, and for example, in Hungary, 27%. This amount does not transfer forward as a revenue. There is the commission for a platform holder or a retail chain.
There are other costs: quality assurance, localization, and especially for the retail side, there are distribution fees. The product needs to be marketed, and traditionally, the marketing efforts are very front-loaded, so they happen around the game launch, pre and post-launch. Also during the game's lifecycle, the extensions and bundlings require additional marketing efforts. After these deductions, we get the shareable revenue. We have here used as an example 45% out of that. This is the deal we have with 505 Games for Control. You can see that there's a big variation in this example from EUR 3-EUR 27 what we get from the consumer player price. That's in percentages from 30%-40%.
In order to understand and analyze the game sales, and in order to be able to forecast them further, we need detailed understanding knowledge about the game's sales channels, discount campaigns, geography, and these cost deductions. To be noted that this is just an illustrative example, and with the different game and with the different partner, the table looks different. For example, with Epic Games, we have announced that the revenue share for us is 50%, and then there is also the development fee recoup element, which is not here. As it was visible in the previous table, it is clear that the good terms with the publishing partner are in the core of our profitability. The main elements in these aspects are, of course, the possibilities to large enough budgets for tens of millions of EUR and the projects lasting for many years.
We need to agree also about the budget sharing, the cost recoups, and the revenue share. It is important that we have a partner who has capabilities for marketing and other promotional activities throughout the game's lifecycle. It is important that we build up such games that have the long-term sales possibilities, and even increasingly going forward, the capabilities for in-game monetization. As an end result of these, we should ensure a good cash position for this project, which then again can feed and give us better position when negotiating, for example, for a sequel for this product. Next, let's take a look at how the cash flow thinking and accounting relate to each other with our projects. Here is an illustrative example of a project which would be developed within three years, and also the game's lifecycle would be three years.
We would be then having the partner sharing the development costs with us. The cash flow, it's rather simple. During the project development phase, we receive the development fees from our partner, and then we pay out the investment. We pay out our own work and then external development. Once the game is launched, in this example, in year four, we start to then receive the royalties as a revenue share after the recouping element is first taken out. When comparing to the accounting, we need to take into account the capitalization. During the project development phase, we will partially capitalize the costs. This percentage comes from the share of unsure revenue out of the total expected return for this product. When the game is launched, we also then start to recognize as revenue the royalties.
In terms of timing, we might recognize them in a little bit earlier phase than we actually then receive the cash flow from our partner based on the payment terms. We need to depreciate the capitalized items during the game's expected lifecycle and sales curve shape. There is some timely variation around here between these two, but of course, eventually, cumulatively, they end up with the same result. Now, going forward with the renewed strategy, how do we ensure that these value generation drivers are boosted even further? What is our long-term potential? The core is to understand the long-term value driver cycle. Here, the most important thing is within games and brands. Our IP, what we own, is the most valuable asset we have.
By being able to build up attractive brands, quality games, achieving wide audiences and fanbase, we can only truly ensure the longevity of the company. Johannes and Sami will discuss with you more about these aspects later. It is clear that we need talented people, we need creativity, but we also need to be sure that these marvelous creative ideas get transferred into tangible, playable worlds and get into the hands of the players. We need also production capabilities, scalability. We need to scale up also our technology and reuse the content and do that in a timely manner. Chris and Mikaela will discuss more about these aspects later. There is, of course, the commercial position we want to achieve and the profitable growth we want to have.
These aspects lie around, just as explained, around the partnering terms and also the mechanics in the product itself to be able to have the long-term sales and the monetization possibilities going forward. As a company, we would reach the good cash position, which again then feeds this whole loop forward in a positive way. We need to have a happy marriage of three aspects: creativity, technology, and business. Even going forward, it's really important to understand on a portfolio level that we have multiple different projects which balance the risk and the reward. In the self-publishing model, there is clearly more reward, but there's also more risk. The other side is the subcontracting model with limited risk, but also limited reward. It's still good business.
This subcontracting model we have currently in use with our partner, Smilegate, in Crossfire operations. In the middle of these is the own IP partnering model, the model we have currently with 505 Games and Epic Games. There are also many different dimensions within this field, and we must play our own game smartly to choose the correct structure or structures in this field. We also want to look at how these products enhance each other's success going forward. Traditionally, AAA games have had a sales curve, but the majority of the sales happen around the game launch. This is especially true for a game within an established IP. For a game in a new IP, like Control, it might take a longer time before the peak is achieved.
Normally, the main game sales can be later on boosted, for example, with DLCs, the downloadable contents. There is the subcontracting model, which is more stable in nature. There is the cost model, where it normally takes a longer time before the higher sales level is reached because the product is launched in an earlier phase of development. On the other hand, it can have many years of revenue generation possibilities. What is the total potential then? The first block can be subcontracting model. On top of that, there is normally the royalty potentials. Secondly, we can have our own IP partnering model, where we have the development fees and the revenue shares, and they can be boosted by DLCs. We could have another one like that: development fees and revenue shares and DLCs.
If we end at the self-publishing model, we understand that there the potential for our revenue is even higher. On top of all these, we can slowly build up our GaaS model. EBIT percentage kind of naturally follows this trend, as the more we have game sales revenues out of the total revenue, the higher the EBIT. This illustrates one sort of potential realistic future scenario for us. Should one of these games be a massive hit like Control, then the graph would look even better. There is a lot of potential. Let me summarize. We understand that the core of our success are high-quality games and long-lasting brands. We understand also the potential with self-financing and self-publishing, so we want to strengthen these capabilities.
We also want to look at our projects and products not only on an individual business case-wise so that they would be profitable, but also on a portfolio level so that we understand what is the total profitability for Remedy as a whole company and in the longer term. We see that this is clearly not a sprint. This is not even a marathon, but this is an ultra run. One more final thing. To be more transparent towards the market, we have decided that we start to give out the business reviews also for quarters one and three, in addition to the half-year result releases we already have. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you, Terhi, for such a detailed presentation. You mentioned that the deal terms, the publishing deal terms, are in the core of the business.
How would you describe the deal terms with Epic Games?
The short answer is that we think that the terms are good. They are good in such a sense that business-wise there's the financing they are providing us and then good revenue share. Also in that aspect that we can retain the IP and also have enough creative freedom with the product.
Continuing on the actual sales figures, what are the benefits of digital sales for a developer?
Yes. Like it was visible in the table I showed, the cost deductions in digital channels are lower, which means the higher potential for us for our revenue share. Also, we see that it's possible to have longer-term sales possibilities in digital channels, like Tero also mentioned. In addition, when thinking about entering the self-publishing, it is easier in the digital environment than in the physical one.
Thank you for your answers. Electronic Arts, Square Enix, Ubisoft. During almost three decades, our next presenter has seen it all. With his German sense and sensibility, he will now tell us how Remedy can finish our high-quality games with less money and time. Please welcome to the stage COO Christopher Schmitz.
Thanks a lot, Terhi. Great presentation. Hello. My name is Christopher Schmitz. I'm the Chief Operating Officer at Remedy Entertainment, and I oversee the studio's game development efforts. Today, I will talk about the successful creation and delivery of our games and how we are actually getting organized. As Tero mentioned earlier, this is who we are. We are a category-defining creative super developer. That means a lot. We develop distinctive games, benchmark setting games, and we do it professionally in a multi-project environment, and that is in terms of production.
Today, I would like to help you understand how we develop games and the reason why it is so important how we do it, because we really got to get this right. AAA game development is often about spending a lot of money that can be EUR 100 million or more on just one single game. I can tell you one thing: this is often done with a high degree of inefficiency, causing a lot of waste, so a lot of money actually going into the bin. That's not what we want. At Remedy, we have done Control for just about EUR 30 million, and it's a cutting-edge AAA game experience. That's what we have done with the model we have implemented. Let's have a look at the current state of game development. At Remedy, the multi-project model has been built, and it's functional right now.
That's what we can say. We have four game project teams in place, and next to that, several centralized production support services. This gives us a good basis to evolve our organization and also to build future teams for Remedy, because that's what we are doing. As you can see, our games have different sizes and during the development stages, so the amount of talent being used is always highly optimized for the actual need at that specific point in time for every single project. This allows us to be efficient. This allows us to be effective, getting the maximum value for our budgets, and we can reduce waste like that because we make sure the money goes into the right places. Let's have a look at our current production capabilities. This is where we are now in 2020. We are now managing huge teams.
Here are the numbers on how we are set up. We have five main games in development organized in 15 different projects, delivering our games to 10 different platforms. That is a lot for our studio. We have developed our production capabilities a lot in the recent years. A lot of focus is going into that, and our teams now employ 274 Remedy talent out of 14 different disciplines. They get supported by 31 external development studios as partners with more than 370 external talents working on our games right now. We have now an increasing number of highly tuned internal game development teams as well. All of this is supported by our growing partner network of highly qualified external developers. When we review our path from where we are coming from and where we are now for the future, we really have a strong basis to build on.
As Tero, our CEO, showed us, one of our strategic guidelines for the future is to iterate towards bigger games with professional and scalable game productions while boosting creativity. I really like that sentence because it really summarizes what Remedy is all about. It is about many elements of this already implemented in order they are working, and the new ones, they will be developed over time, one thing at a time. Let me show you some of the key focus areas and how we make this happen. Let's have a look at scalability. Scalability is one of the critical things in AAA game development. In game development, it is all about great teams. It is not our studio management that creates the games, but the great teams we have here. They create the games.
They put so much of their hearts, so much of their souls into our productions to deliver outstanding gaming experiences for our players that they appreciate so much. Scalability in game development is important. We want to build bigger games. We want to build better games, and we also want to build more of them. Scalable game development brings us a lot of benefits, but yeah, it also brings a lot of challenges. Things like when we do more and bigger games, we need larger teams, obviously. If the teams are getting larger, that means more complexity for our teams. More complexity is also more difficult to manage. It's as easy as that. More complexity in terms of communication, dependencies, planning, decision-making, and so on. I think you can assume that for yourself.
Then we even have things on top of that, like we have the competition for talent and resources between projects, between different studio functions. We, as a studio management, need to build the available talent pool for the studio as a whole so we can serve all of our projects when they need people. Also, we are looking into getting, we have dependencies between projects, and we are looking into getting synergies out of all the projects so they can build on top of each other. That needs to be managed as well. That is quite a challenge. How do we solve that? In order to enable our teams to master these challenges, we want our game development teams, every single one of them, to be highly empowered and to be a highly empowered creative fellowship. What does that mean for me?
For me, that means they should really own and drive their own creative vision. They should be really operating as autonomous as possible. They should drive their games to become the best possible experience without micromanagement, without too much guidance from above. I feel that's very important for our teams. They should be empowered to make important calls for the games on their own. They should be working autonomous so they can drive their own thing forward. We need to give them everything they need. We need to empower them as good as we can to remove any obstacle out of their way and give them everything they need at a time when they need them in order to allow them to be successful.
They need to be highly aligned because we need to make sure all the teams are actually delivering against the high-level studio guidelines, the quality requirements we have in place, and so on, without them losing their autonomy. In order to do that, I believe it is good to say we are rather a large fleet of speedboats than one big ocean liner because game development is largely complex. We need scalable teams. A big ocean liner has just one captain, just one steering wheel. It is way more difficult and way slower to turn around, and it is way more complex to operate. When we have a look at a fleet of small speedboats, every single boat will be able to operate way more efficient, way more agile, faster, so they will much better reach their best, very specific destination with less overhead for better cost efficiency.
That's what we are looking for. How do we do this then? We at Remedy believe that a strong team is built around great leadership. We have our game development teams owning their projects and driving them forward. Right now, four main teams. They are supported by centralized shared service units, different ones, to empower them, to give them everything they need when they need it, and overseen and empowered by studio management as well to agree on high-level objectives, high-level visions, and then let them do what they can do best, creating great games. How does that look in detail? Let's dive a little bit into how the project teams are organized. What we can say, we are not organizing it as a project. We are organizing it as a game program. We implemented the structure to allow scaling for a great degree of autonomy and empowerment.
This initiative is not organized as a project, like I said. It's a program of project. That means a lot of projects altogether to deliver against the required target, the game, the game experience. We do so to reduce the complexity and to empower our teams. It all starts with the leadership team of that team, of that program. It's about the executive producer. He's basically accountable to the company core management for the delivery of the game against the mandate. He's basically the CEO of the project. Other core team members helping him on fulfilling that mission, the game director, the development director, product director, tech director, and art director.
While the game director owns and drives how the game plays, looks, sounds, and feels, creative director, the development director is actually owning and driving the operational model and to ship the game in time, budget, and quality. The product director is the commercial officer, basically, in this production. He makes sure we are developing the right game for the right markets, for the right players, and they will enjoy what we are delivering. And he knows what's the competition in that market space and how can we stand out of the crowd to be commercially viable, to deliver a viable business case. Then the technology director, game development, is all around technology, about the latest state-of-the-art features, about animation, about ray tracing, and so on. That person is driving that forward.
The art director, translating the game vision into good-looking graphics, which is one of the key things of Remedy games because our games are usually visually stunning, outstanding. That team we call the core leadership. They're getting supported by an extended leadership team of different craft leads, also on a program level, owning and driving the program from their specific perspective. For example, a visual effects lead would own the whole program from a visual effects point of view to make sure all of the project team members will deliver against the vision on that. Where the majority of people are actually working are the strike teams. The strike teams are these little speedboats, the little speedboats that can sail as fast as possible, take corners, and cut the road so they actually find their best destination as efficiently as possible.
We cut the projects down into smaller parts that can be a level, that can be gameplay-specific features. It could be the multiplayer. It could be the single player. That is then owned by one individual strike team with its own leadership team. They are highly empowered to deliver against the vision as defined by the extended and core leadership team. We have a lot of them, and it depends how the project is actually structured and how it is broken down. It is looking different from project to project. In that way, we can make sure we reduce the complexity and we allow our people to move as fast as possible, producing the best possible quality output. When you have such a large and kind of complex structure, it is very important to keep a great degree of alignment.
We talk about high level of autonomy paired with a high level of alignment. We have implemented a process for that. We start with a very specific mandate, and we carry it all the way through. It is minimizing our risk. It is increasing our predictability. We had some problems in the past that things were not clear enough, and we have addressed that in the last years to make sure the project team knows what are their success criteria because this is where we start. We build a mandate. We define the objectives, the success criteria. We, as a studio management, delegate that to the executive producer, the CEO of the project. He then takes that, is accountable to us, and then delegates the sub-areas on his core team of directors, the extended leadership, and eventually also then on the strike teams, the little speedboats.
The creative and competent team owns the game. They drive its development. The mechanisms are in place to give them enough guidance, enough support, but they drive it in between the stage gates in a highly autonomous way because at the beginning of every stage, they know what is expected of them. At the end of the stage, we check in with them together to make sure we are still well aligned. The dev team knows in which direction it needs to move. We also take decisions together if something needs to change. After the mandate was created, we go into a concept stage. The creative vision on what we're going to create is then aligned at the end of that stage. The proof of concept stage, it's already about software. We are implementing the core gameplay into the game.
We show that already at that stage to external experts to make sure we have really managed to find the fun. It goes through the rest of the stage gate process to production readiness, gives us a credible plan, a fully functional team, the whole game really planned out. We go into a production stage where the heavy lifting takes place and the game actually gets built together. Latest to the release candidate stage where we make it ready to get shipped. What's very important to say is that at the beginning, we are highly creative, highly adaptive. That means a small team can make up ideas, change that the next day, make up another idea, discuss it with us, discuss it with anyone else.
We change it again, and then the whole thing will evolve and will become better one day after the other. The further we go into the stage gate process, the more predictive this process becomes because latest at the production stage, we need to have a very good understanding of what game we are actually building here because this is where the heavy lifting takes place. If by production you do not fully understand what game you are building, you will have a lot of waste. That is something we have really improved on. Just to show why this is so important, this is basically the allocation of talent on the projects. You can see during the production stage, this is where the majority of money gets spent. The early stages, they could be prolonged.
It's not too expensive to do that, to give the team a little bit more time to find the fun in the game. If that kind of problem happens in the production stage, that gets very expensive. Just to give you some info on the timings, the mandate stage could take a few days or a few weeks. High concept, proof of concept stage takes two, three, four months, five months, maybe something like that. Production is actually which takes a lot of time. It can take a year or even longer with the highest amount of people, and then the game gets shipped. That's also important because of our multi-project model. We can't scale up like that because many independent developers who only have one game, these single project studios, they have to full headcount from the very start. It's very expensive, very counterproductive, very wasteful.
In early phases, a new game needs time to find its vision and design. It is therefore best done with a small team in a very incremental, iterative way. If there would be a big team assigned to a project very early on, a lot of people would just be waiting, waiting for stuff to do. They would basically harass the game designers and say, "What should I program now?" They said, "I do not know yet." That is very wasteful. That is something we have overcome at Remedy, and that is great. That is thanks to our multi-project model. When the game then gets shipped, we go into a live stage. The live stage looks roundabout like this. We ship the game. We deploy it on a server. People can start playing it. We measure the success of the game.
We measure how the people are playing it for real. We then learn. We discuss with our community. We understand how are the players playing this game for real. We continue with our design process. We build a new version. We deploy it again to our players. That is, in the best case, a cycle that takes years and years and years because then the game is very successful and highly appreciated by our community. That is what we are going for. That is the future of video game development. Let's come back a little bit to the supportive environment because that is a very important key criteria here at Remedy. The supportive environments are like IT, QA, cinematics, just to mention a few. The key ones I want to talk about today are Northlight, XDev, and the PMO, the Portfolio Management Office.
A quick look at Northlight. That's our game tech engine team who builds the rendering engine, the tools, and all the supporting services in terms of technology for our game dev teams. It's an expert team that helps all the game projects. They have the ability to do groundbreaking features. Things like the physics and the ray tracing in Control are a good example of that. These are things other teams just cannot do that easily. This gives us a great competitive advantage. They also help with the iterative development and all the synergies around the projects because they're building engines. They build pipelines. They build technology we're going to reuse in the next games, and it will become better and better over a period of time. That gives us a great competitive advantage as well.
Another big topic for the scalability, because this is one of our key topics here, is external development. It's a key for scaling up the company. We implemented a structure to allow scaling for a great degree of autonomy and empowerment. That's what we already discussed. Our teams are also scaling these efforts, not internally, but also to the external. We have strong partners on board to help us shipping these games. We have broken it down in three key areas. It's co-development. Co-development is where we do surgery on the open heart together, like a feature team, strike team who's working on one specific feature very closely with our teams. It could feel like they're sitting together in one office. It could feel like they're just one part of Remedy, because they're highly, highly integrated. That's also the future of video game development.
It's scaling through co-development. We have external productions. That's very handy and good for outsourcing complete productions, like we've just done that recently. Control for the Switch was one example for that. We have done that with an external partner who did the complete Switch port. We had oversight on that, obviously. We had accountability for that, but the heavy lifting and also the leadership on that on a detailed daily basis was done somewhere else. The traditional outsourcing is about art, assets, audio, case by case. We are working with a lot of partners. This is something which is the most elaborated area of external development. This is what we're using every single day right now. Without that, we couldn't build the modern AAA games anymore.
The portfolio management office is also a very important shared service, supporting the multi-project environment. We have the projects, the four main game teams we are operating right now. The projects are all subject to internal competition and synergies. They are competing for talent, for example. We have one pool of talent, and we assign them on the different projects at the right point in time when they need them. They are basically in competition for the same studio-wide talent pool. We must build that talent pool for anticipation of the long-term project needs and the studio needs. The projects will also face dependencies between each other. As we want them to enjoy synergies, we want to create between them tools, pipelines, assets, features, other key learnings. The PMO, Portfolio Management Office, is driving all of that and more.
They drive the stage gate process. They help improving our overall level of project management competence. They are helping with production pipelines and tools to coordinate that. They make sure to get the right person on the right project at the right point in time. This is basically the central hub around how we distribute our resources in the studio. We talk about scalability. We also talk about iteration. Iteration means that every game builds a stronger basis for every future game because our goal is to build better games, bigger games, but we want to do that more efficient and with less risk. For example, efficiency is a lot about investing money, the cost, the expenditure we have on projects. If we manage that pillar right, we can do much bigger games without skyrocketing budgets.
That is something we are looking for, and we are investing a lot into that, that we can make that happen. This means more value for our players by building games on top of what we already created and learned. This can be engine and tools. This can be gameplay systems we've created that work well and can be used in another game. It is about the game world and the underlying universe, the Remedy universe. It is about the development experience, just the competence of our people we have. With every single day they're here, they will learn something, and that creates value as well. It is about an expanding content library. All these assets can be used in other games as well. Obviously, it is about our IPs. It is the player feedback we get. The players are the center of our attention. We love our players.
We are in very close contact with them. We want to understand how they play our games, and then we can build on top of that. Then the next game will better fulfill their needs and make them way more excited than ever before. To just show it as a graphic, this is actually how it looks like. With the same amount of investment and the same amount of time, we can build bigger and better games. Game One, Game Two, Game Three are basically from the same franchise. The second one is already bigger than the first one because it builds on top of the first one, the same for the third one. This will give us a competitive advantage. Overall, it is about Remedy delivering hit games in a predictable manner and fashion.
It's about projects at Remedy are well designed, well planned, well led, and well resourced, and all of that in a multi-project environment. We have the game program. That's one single game. With our top talent, we put on that, they will produce the best product value for our players. We give them autonomy and alignment. We give them empowerment to take their own decisions. We give them our tailor-made technology done by the Northlight engine team and the pipelines and workflows they can use that get better over a period of time. A very highly supportive environment so they get supported when they need it, and we can leave them alone when they want to take their own decisions. That's causing the best product value for our players.
As some key takeaways, Remedy is about professional game development, a well-organized and reliable studio with organized projects, about synergies so we can build on top of what we already have, more value for less investment, scalability because we want to deliver significantly more than we otherwise could. Thank you.
Thank you, Chris. The feedback page is absolutely flooded with questions, but we have time for one. You have plenty of personal experience from big international studios. How do Remedy's operation compare to them?
That's a very interesting question because I think Remedy is on a very long journey. The company exists for 25 years. It was basically born as a very creative small studio. Since a few years, it's in a big growth phase, and you can really see how the creativity needs getting better organized. Since coming here, I'm very impressed how well the developers are accepting that. They're really asking for that. They want to get better organized because in game development, if things don't work out, it often ends in some kind of crunch. That's something nobody wants. Remedy is very good in avoiding that. Therefore, the developers are not really resisting that. That's really good because in other studios, it can look very different.
I think we have a good way ahead of us getting our teams on board with that and give them what they need so they can be successful.
Great to hear. Thank you, Chris.
Thank you.
I think we've all earned a small break. For the next five minutes, we're going to watch a couple of game trailers, of course, from Remedy's games. During the break, please grab a cup of coffee, pet your dog, go to the bathroom. Please stay tuned because after the break, we have some exciting news from our publishing unit. See you after the break.
August 4th, 1964. Bureau agents discover the Oldest House investigating an altered world event case in the New York City subway tunnels. It's a place of power. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary building, a brutalist skyscraper. Inside, it breaks the laws of our reality: unstable, mad, shifting. There are rooms in the building where other dimensions leak in. We call these rooms thresholds. There is a connection between our minds and the unknown, often hostile forces intruding on our world. These forces gravitate toward everyday objects: a gun, a television, a house with a reputation of being haunted. Somehow, we affect these events. We're holding the key, but we don't have a clue on how to use it. We're dealing with dangerous, unknown forces here. What's the cause, and what's the effect? Are we the starting point or just a necessary evil in this?
We're on a mission to find answers to these questions or die trying. This is Zachariah Trench, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Control.
Luis Torres, I've seen your future. Global Risk is scared of the weapon you will become.
Destiny chose me to save this world, and I will see it.
Black List, we make our own path. We protect our own.
Can you protect me from fate?
17 seconds.
We got something.
Soon, the entire world will burn all because of him.
The ghost is here!
Fair warning. This is going to be weirder than usual. Can't be helped. My brother was just a kid when they took him. They thought I'd never find this place, that I'd forget about him. They were wrong. They'll try to stop me, but I'm stronger than them. We're stronger. You and I.
Welcome back. I hope you have enjoyed our capital markets day so far. Now, let's take a different kind of commercial break and take a deep dive into the exciting world of publishing and marketing. Please welcome to the stage CCO Johannes Paloheimo.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for tuning back in again. The strong financial position, shipping critically acclaimed Control, and the systematic long-term developments we have done have generated high interest within the games industry and given Remedy a unique business position that the company has not seen since the Max Payne days. Let's have a look at some of the developments we have done on the commercial side to get where we are today.
Since setting out our growth strategy in 2017, we have been focusing on forming the right business partnerships, building competencies to support our games to succeed and fulfill their business potential, aligning our games with market and player needs to reach a wider audience, and to build a strong foundation for the future. Having the right business partnership really helps Remedy to punch above our weight. Our aim is to build partnerships that complement each other where Remedy has the freedom to conduct our business and develop our strategy on our own terms and to make sure that when Remedy succeeds, our partner will succeed as well and vice versa. Our marketing partnership helps bring additional visibility and promote our games on platforms otherwise hard and expensive to reach. With Control, we had partnerships, for example, with PlayStation, Epic Games Store, NVIDIA, and NVIDIA.
These are very significant partnerships. The development partnership with Smilegate on Crossfire allows Remedy to create games leaning on our core strengths while going into a completely different genre and market. This also helps grow our teams and bring in new capabilities into the studio while at the same time not limiting us from creating and building our own and new IPs. The publishing partnership with 505 Games and in reality is more of a co-finance, co-publishing model. The partnership enables Remedy to have full creative control, full IP ownership. It puts no corporate development limitations on Remedy, and it allows for shipping the game on multiple platforms. These requirements could not have been achieved with any other partner back when we were pitching Control.
Our latest publishing partnership with Epic Games allows Remedy to continue on the path set forth with Control and 505 Games, but this time without Remedy carrying part of the financial risk. In the case of Epic, their deal terms could not have been matched by any other deal that we had on the table to choose from. Now, let's have a look at some of our internal developments. A big focus area has and will continue to be to strengthen our internal Remedy Publishing team's resources and capability to better support the publishing and commercialization of our games. Remedy Publishing is a cross-functional team that works closely together with our game development teams, with finance, and with our external partners. We are now a team of nine people strong, up from four people just two years back.
The team has a wide set of expertise ranging from marketing, communication, community management, market asset creation, product management, user research, data analytics, and commercial developments. As Chris mentioned in his section on strengthening the project core leadership team, we have structured our project leadership teams to have commercial owners inside of each project team. One of the responsibilities of the product director is to help our game teams to become more player and market-driven. It is the product director's role to help align our games with the right target audience and market demands. This is done through systematically conducting market research, target audience analysis, and user testing. To best support our growth plans, it is also very important that we work closely together with finance to help support them with financial forecasting and aligning our business cases with the desired investment risk-reward ambitions.
Finally, Remedy Publishing supports our publishing partners to help maximize the commercial potential of our games. The engagement level will differ from games and the game needs and also on the partnership arrangements. Let's now have a look at how all of this has translated into our games and projects and how they have succeeded. To recap, these are the five game projects that we have in development, four for internal brands, and one for an external brand. Now, let's jump into Control. Launching a new IP is a big challenge, and we knew that with limited resources, creating wider awareness for the game will take time. Therefore, after launching Control, our focus with 505 Games has been on increasing the awareness of Control to capitalize on the sales potential of the game.
We have continuously been working on promoting the game through new content updates, bringing the game out to new platforms and stores, and running targeted advertisement. Throughout these activities, the awareness of the game has steadily been increasing over time, as have the revenue streams. As Tero mentioned in his presentation, the market has been rapidly shifting from a physical retail market to a digital market. Operating in a digital market allows for more freedom to actively manage promotions and discounts, as well as more targeted advertisement and promotions on digital stores. We have with 505 Games taken out all the benefits of this rapid shift. The result of working to obtain the full business potential of Control has led to that never has a Remedy game been so widely available. Control has become a truly multi-platform game.
Control is available on various PC digital stores, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, coming soon to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S and X. The game is available on Nintendo Switch and Switch Cloud Service and on Amazon Luna Cloud Service. There is a wide variety of platforms coming to this list in 2021. Opportunities like PlayStation Now and Xbox Game Pass, which just started, have also provided additional awareness for the game, and these B2B deals are also significant revenue streams. On the content side, since launching Control, we have been releasing five major content updates: two free updates, two paid expansions, and finally, the Ultimate Edition version that bundles all this content into one ultimate package. All of these content updates have given us the opportunity to talk about the game, promote the content, and run campaigns to drive sales.
Speaking about sales, Control continues to sell strong digitally. Last month, November, 15 months after the launch, we actually made a sales record in terms of units sold. This is thanks to Control being a high-quality game, the increased awareness, and the promotions and sales opportunities selling digitally brings. To date, Control has sold over 2 million copies, and this is a major milestone for Remedy and our partner 505 Games. This makes Control Remedy's fastest-growing new IP since Max Payne. To illustrate the rapid shift towards digital sales, last year, physical still accounted for about 40% of total sales, but this year, physical has dropped to less than 10%. Here, you can see the digital sales dynamics of Control and the sales effect of promotions and discounts. This is from launching the game till the end of June this year.
Next, let's have a look at Crossfire. The collaboration with Smilegate started back in 2016, and Remedy is building the single-player operations to be part of their Crossfire multiplayer franchise. Remedy's revenues are based on development payments and with an option to future potential royalties. It is important to understand that Remedy's role is to create high-quality content for Smilegate, and we're not taking part in publishing that content. When the content will be released is solely up to Smilegate and its publishing partners. Crossfire is not a very known game here in the West, so most of you might not be familiar with the brand, but it's actually one of the most popular game brands in Asia and China, and Smilegate has strong ambitions to make Crossfire into a global brand.
The game was originally launched back in 2007, and as you can see from the SuperData research here on the right, the game is still going strong 13 years after launching, continuing to be a top-grossing game on PC. Smilegate is very actively working to grow the Crossfire franchise, and Remedy's single-player operations are playing a key role in this expansion of the franchise. Smilegate is working to bring Crossfire X to consoles together with Microsoft. There is a movie in the works together with Sony Pictures. There is a Crossfire drama series in China and various other game projects like Crossfire Mobile in China with Tencent. For you who have been following Remedy for quite some time, you have heard us talk about Crossfire HD and Crossfire X.
Let me break down these two a little bit more and add some context for you to better understand what they are. Crossfire HD is a continuation to the Crossfire game in China. Crossfire X is a new console game in the Crossfire franchise. Crossfire HD is for PC, and Crossfire X is for Xbox One and Xbox Series X and S. Crossfire HD has gone through closed alpha and open beta phases throughout 2020, and Crossfire X is to be released in 2021. Both games are being developed by Smilegate, and Crossfire HD is being published by Tencent, and Crossfire X is being published by Microsoft. Crossfire HD will include Remedy's single-player operations, and Crossfire X includes Remedy's single-player operations.
To update you all where we are now, Remedy Entertainment has completed the majority of its work on Operation 2 for the Crossfire franchise, with some development still remaining on Series X and S versions. We're preparing for the upcoming Crossfire HD for PC in China and for Crossfire X for Xbox globally in 2021. We're looking forward to continuing our great partnership with Smilegate on the Crossfire franchise. Talking about great partnerships, let's hear from another one that we are now building.
Hi, my name is Hector Sanchez, and I'm the Head of Epic Games Publishing. With Epic Games Publishing, we're looking to work with the best and most creative minds in the industry, and I can't think of a better example of that than Remedy.
In working with the team over the last couple of months, we've learned a lot about how they view production and product marketing, and we can't wait to help bring their games to the masses over the next couple of years and see what we can get.
Now, we're moving into territory where our lips will still continue to be sealed for a while. The projects undertaken with Epic Games Publishing in the spring are still to be announced. Continue to have patience with us. You will be hearing more about these when the time is right. It is worth recapping that these are two separate games, one bigger and one smaller. For all of you who like forecasting and modeling sales, let's go through some of the key deal terms that we have with Epic.
Epic is funding 100% of development, and Epic will invest over EUR 10 million into marketing. After development advances and marketing investment has been recouped, Epic will pay Remedy 50% of net revenues received. I have been talking about how important it is to select the right partnership for our games. We had multiple concrete publishing options, but Epic was the best fit for these games and for Remedy. Remedy gets to retain full IP ownership and without limitations on future projects and corporate developments. In return, Remedy is playing a key part when supporting Epic in its ambitious plans to shake up the publishing business. We have Vanguard. We have been very quiet about Vanguard, and we will continue to be so for quite a while still to come. Please have patience with us. You will know more when the time is right.
Vanguard, it's just what the name says it is. It's Remedy's way of exploring a completely different segment of the market than that we're doing with our more traditional games. It's a long-lasting service-based multiplayer game that leans into Remedy's core world-building and narrative strengths. We're approaching building Vanguard step by step, iteratively testing and learning along the way. We're taking our time, but first, external concept evaluations show promise. Yes, Vanguard is being designed as a free-to-play game. For now, we're self-funding the game, and we haven't decided yet what the publishing model for the game will be. As you can see from our internal developments and some of the first fruits, we have been building a stronger foundation for the future to continue improving Remedy's position in the value chain.
To best support the next phase of our strategy, we will continue to focus on increasing the overall business potential of our games by bringing market and player understanding to the center of our game projects and building business cases with bigger success potential for Remedy. We will continue working with great publishing partners on selected games, and we will continue to build competencies and capabilities to be able to self-finance and self-publish selected future games. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, Johannes. In the feedback section, someone was actually commenting on whether Remedy will finally release some game sales data, and we finally have it, over 2 million copies sold. Talking about some other games, you mentioned that Remedy has completed the majority of the work on Crossfire Operation Two. I assume that's Operation One. How did the collaboration begin? What's the history?
Yes, so there is an Operation One, and Remedy announced back in 2018 that we finalized the majority of the work on Operation One. As I mentioned, it's up to Smilegate and its publishing partners to decide when Operation One and Operation Two are going to be published. For the question on how the partnership came about and all of this, it's one of these funny stories when casual introductions at game industry events bear some really good fruits.
That's great to hear. Now, let's move on. Our next presenter has experience from both pharmaceutical and music industries. No wonder she ended up in a company called Remedy Entertainment. Today, she will tell us how Remedy succeeds in attracting and keeping world-class talent. Please say hi and welcome to HR Director Mikaela Öberg.
Hello, and thank you, Lauri, for the introduction.
Yes, my name is Mikaela Öberg, and I'm the HR Director of Remedy Entertainment. I have been working at Remedy for a bit over four years, and during those years, we have been growing and developing to be the most attractive home for world-class talent. Right now, we are soon 300 people from 30 different nationalities. Over half of our people come from somewhere else than Finland. We have people with very different kinds of backgrounds and very different kinds of professionals. We have programmers, we have game designers, we have artists, we have animators, just to mention a few. Altogether, we have 14 different disciplines. Why does international talent choose us? The most important thing is our company culture: low hierarchy, multicultural, learning and development possibilities, and that we are a house full of passionate people.
We hear that during the recruitment process, people feel that they are being treated as an individual, not only as one person amongst the other in a process. That tells something about our culture. We are also known for our healthy work-life balance. Of course, our previous games play a big role. I meet all of the candidates in the final stage of the interview, and they often tell me how they have been playing our games either recently or a long time ago and been dreaming of one day becoming a Remedian. Also, Finland plays a role. We are known to be a clean and safe country, and we have nature around us. After a working day, you can go hiking in the woods, bicycling, or kayaking in the archipelago and still be living in the middle of Helsinki.
When people join us and choose to come to Finland, quite often they also have a family that will move together with them. We also care about our people's families. We have a group called Finlandization that organizes different kinds of events. This year, mostly remote events. Most importantly, people get to know each other in similar situations and get networks, get friends in a new country. We efficiently attract and recruit in a highly competitive talent market. Here are some figures from this year until today. Our recruitment process is very efficient. It is systematic, and we do everything we can to attract the best people out there. The recruitment is led by a professional recruitment and talent attraction team.
During the past four years, we have been developing and taking into use sophisticated people processes to be able to empower our teams and people. Of course, recruitment, talent attraction, employer branding has been in the core when we have been growing from four years ago, a bit over 100 people, to soon 300 people. We support our people, our talent, in various kinds of ways when it comes to relocation, learning and development, occupational health, just to mention a few examples. Well-being, both physical and mental, is very important for us. Especially during this year with the ongoing pandemic, it's been even more important. Having great leaders who support and coach their people is very important. We have ongoing leadership development where our leaders have learned how to communicate with different kinds of people, how to motivate, how to have one-on-ones, how to give feedback.
Our leaders have ongoing one-on-ones with all of their team members to be able to support them here and now, but also looking into the future. We in HR have ongoing one-on-ones with the leaders so that we are able to support them. The rewarding, it has to be wholesome. It has to be fair, but still take into consideration the exceptional performance. Today, you have heard already many times mentioning about us being a multi-project organization. That has also given us possibilities to give our people more learning and development possibilities than before. This year, over 40 people have already been given a chance to proceed in their career within Remedy. We also measure our employee engagement on an ongoing basis.
The reason why we do that is that we want to know where we are right now and what we can do even better in the future. We can look at the company as a whole. We can look at different teams. We can look at different projects. We measure the engagement with 14 different drivers, drivers that are very important according to engagement and motivational theories. In the one-on-one discussions that we are having with the leaders, we also look at this so that we are able to know and figure out what are the most important things to focus on in that specific team or that specific project. Our engagement score right now is 8.2 out of 10, and we are benchmarked against other similar companies who also value these kinds of things, and we are doing great.
People in the game industry tend to move around quite often. It's not unusual that after a project, people start to think about another project, another company. According to some research in the gaming industry, the employee turnover is in average about 15%. We want to keep our people. We make a lot of effort into finding the best talent out there, so we want to keep them at Remedy. That's why I'm very happy to say that at Remedy, we have been managed to keep a hold of our talent even better every year. I'm also glad to say that we have people who have left Remedy for one reason or another, but have returned to Remedy. I said already earlier, well-being, both physical and mental well-being, is very important for us.
Also during this year, which has been very special for all of us, we wanted to measure our COVID response. According to this, our people think that we've been responding appropriately to the COVID situation. The safety precautions we have taken have been the right ones, and that the well-being has been in the core when decisions have been made. Just a few small examples of what we have been doing when it comes to the well-being. We have people from all over the world, and some of them might live totally alone. We have different kinds of channels where they can still continue socializing with their colleagues so that they don't feel that they are alone.
We also have a well-being channel where we every week, almost even every day, post every kind of hints and tips, links, videos, how our people can take care of their own mental and physical well-being in this current situation. To sum it all up, to be able to be the most attractive game industry employer, we will continue to attract, find, support, support competence and knowledge sharing, support development possibilities to be able to be the most attractive home for our world-class talent. Thank you.
Thank you, Mikaela. You mentioned that we put a lot of effort into finding new talent, but it's also important to keep hold of your existing talent. Why has Remedy's employee retention improved so drastically over the years?
I think the most important thing is us becoming a multi-project organization because that has given our people possibilities to learn and develop and have internal career paths. Then our great leaders and continuous leadership development, I think, is one very important thing as well, and our healthy work-life balance. I think those are the most important things.
Good to hear. Thank you, Mikaela. Now it's time for our final presenter. He really doesn't need an introduction, but I'm going to do one anyways. He has the mind of David Lynch, the moves of David Bowie, and the face of Max Payne. He's the one and only creative director, Sam Lake.
Thank you, Lauri, for that very creative introduction. I'm very proud of you. Hey, everyone. I'm Sam Lake, the creative director of Remedy Entertainment. I hope you've been enjoying the presentations from my esteemed colleagues.
Once more with feeling. I have been at Remedy almost from the beginning, so over 25 years. And for over 25 years, we have been crafting award-winning games, always taking the learnings from one project to the next and growing the company in the process. I'm going to talk about what makes a Remedy game unique and where we are planning to take our games in the future. What makes a Remedy game? What are our fans eagerly waiting for in our games? What are we passionate about? What do we believe in? What excites us? What are we best at? I'm going to start by going back to the beginning. Remedy was among the very first to bring stories and storytelling into action games with our Max Payne. Thrilling stories into action game framework has been a key principle of a Remedy game ever since.
Through storytelling, we create immersive, deep worlds for our players to dive into. We create character-driven experiences where the hero, the character you play, is aspirational and relatable to make you care about what happens to the character and to give you the power fantasy of stepping into the shoes of that hero. Stories are universal. A good story resonates across the globe. We create a story-focused experience to take you on a thrill ride filled with twists, turns, and cliffhangers to keep you on the edge of your seat. We believe that compared to the traditional linear media, having these storytelling elements in a game experience can make them even more thrilling and engaging as the player is an active part of the experience. We bring our storytelling to the service of gameplay, which is at the heart of any game experience.
What the player does, what the player is able to do. The gameplay is the king. Storytelling is a vehicle that pulls the players in to make them care about the stakes they are fighting for in the game. Our goal gameplay is action gameplay. We create polished, explosive, visually stunning action experiences. The goal is always to have the core gameplay that is easy to pick up, yet hard, but rewarding to master in order to craft an experience that is interesting and stays engaging for a long time. We want to find hooks for the key gameplay mechanics that make them memorable for the gameplay, but also connect to the experience on a deeper thematical level. In Max Payne, we used bullet time slow motion mechanics to elevate the gunplay. In Alan Wake, dynamic light was your weapon against the forces of darkness.
In Control, we focused on the game physics and dynamic destructibility of the environments to give you supernatural abilities you could use to control everything in the world around you as a weapon in a visceral and satisfying way. In Crossfire X, we have a version of bullet time to elevate the action and to showcase the incredible visuals our team has created for this game. With our Northlight engine, we are constantly pushing the visual fidelity as far as the current generation of hardware allows, working together with the hardware manufacturers to make this possible. This is to allow our artistic visions to be fully realized and to create a unique, recognizable Remedy game look that stands out and has won multiple awards with Control alone. We see our games as entertainment experiences.
We all play games at Remedy, but very consciously, we also look for inspiration in other mediums and art and popular culture overall, movies, TV shows, books, and so on. We are always looking for fresh new ideas to bring into games, ideas and elements that have not been seen or experienced in interactive form before. With our storytelling, we have transported the players into different story genres and settings, from hard-boiled crime thrillers to supernatural horror, from epic science fiction to high-octane war stories. No matter what the genre, it's always our unique take on it to make our games stand out and to make our experiences fresh and memorable. We have an active, ever-growing fan base and community. We love our fans. We love you. You are hugely important to us, always eagerly waiting for the next Remedy game. Our fans are out there spreading the word.
We are very grateful for this. Our fans also are inspired by our games to create art. There is a lot of passion involved. Again and again, we have been blown away by the art our fans create. This, in turn, inspires us in our work. Our fans keep reminding us how important and how cool games are and can be. We can't wait for the world to return to a more normal state to be able to go out there to meet you all again face to face in trade shows and other gaming events. What is the future then? The video game industry is constantly evolving. We want to be there. We want to be part of the cutting edge.
We want to keep expanding our mastery, bring what we do best into new areas, and with that, to provide our players unforgettable journeys into new worlds that we create. Control was a clear leap forward as a Remedy game with a lot more player choice and agency, a bigger, less linear world to discover and explore, and overall, a longer play-through time than in any previous game we have made, all the while retaining and pushing forward the action and storytelling aspects we are known for. This is our mission going forward. We want to be even better in the areas we are known for, but also to keep challenging ourselves to look for new areas to explore. More player choice, less linear experiences, character progression, and role-playing game elements added to action adventure context to bring in more player agency.
As an example of a new exciting area to explore, we are also looking into cooperative multiplayer with Project Vanguard, co-op multiplayer, exploring what would be a unique original Remedy take of a game like that. I'm very excited about the concept and the ideas the team is working on. With Crossfire, working with Smilegate, we had the opportunity to bring our storytelling expertise, what we do best, to the Crossfire universe, and with that, to reach a staggeringly large new audience. As Johannes mentioned, Crossfire is one of the most popular games in the whole world. Now our story-driven single-player content plays a key role in world and character building in this universe.
That alone is very exciting, but interesting for the future as well, to keep exploring how these different elements, single-player story, multiplayer action, can be used together to create something that is more than the sum of its parts. I mentioned that we see our games as entertainment experiences. When we set out to create a new game and story, we always want to create something that can also be translated into other mediums. Our first focus is always in games, but we are looking for ways to expand our brands beyond games as well. In the past, a Max Payne movie was made. In Quantum Break, we created a TV show inside the game. Currently, we are in the process of creating an Alan Wake TV show. Sure enough, it has taken some time, but it is going forward.
On top of that, we are now getting a lot of excited, extremely high-profile interest for Control transmedia as well. Control was our first game where we officially introduced the Remedy Connected niverse, connecting the worlds of our two large game brands, Control and Alan Wake, into the same universe. This has been our plan for a long time. We want each of our games to stand on their own feet, to be exciting and enjoyable on their own, even if you have never played a Remedy game before. Now, with the Remedy Connected Universe, each game is also an introduction and a gateway into a larger universe where more games and experiences are waiting for you. Each game is a stepping stone and a doorway to other games. For our existing fans, there is this larger narrative leading to thrilling crossover events.
More new game brands will be introduced into the connected universe in the future. The next big Remedy game we are working on will take place in the same universe. Here you can see an older photo, no masks before COVID, but you can see just a part of the awesome, talented Remedy crew. As with any high-quality entertainment, our mission is to provide a thrilling escape from our sometimes too hectic and even depressing everyday life. Hello, 2020. I'm looking at you. An escape into more exciting worlds that you can't wait to return to. This is our passion. This is what we believe in. Thank you.
Thank you, Sam, for your kind and inspirational words. You mentioned that we are moving towards less linear experiences, but what does less linear mean for storytelling in video games?
Yeah, like as you have seen with our earlier games, we can do traditional linear stories. The thing is that in a game, the player wants to be in control. No matter how well you do a linear story beat in a game experience, that might not be what the player is interested in just then. They might be distracted and impatient to move on. There is something magical that happens when you break the story apart and make it part of the goal for the player to find the story and consume the story at their own pace. Suddenly, they are very interested, very engaged, and emotionally invested. When they discover these story elements in the world, it's a reward for them. These are the elements we are looking into.
Also through that, actually discovering that this will lead into more story to be discovered in the world. With Control, we took a clear step into this direction, and we are in this journey to discover more.
Sounds great. That is all the time we have. I want to thank you for watching. It is now time for a late goodbye. Thank you for watching. Thank you for sending your questions. For more answers, please send us an email to ir@remedygames.com. I am Lauri Haavisto, and this has been the very first CMD of Remedy. Stay safe, stay healthy. Thank you. Good.