Not the most shocking news, perhaps, but it now seems Remedy has finally come clean and admitted that FBC: Firebreak didn't sell nearly as well as they had hoped. Previous reports that Remedy's first co-op shooter had reached one million players didn't quite match up with the roughly 200 active users seen on Steam. So even if many have likely tried it for free via Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, it clearly hasn't translated into actual sales.
SteamDB and its numbers are usually a decent indicator of which way the wind is blowing - and in Firebreak's case, it's been obvious. An average of fewer than 200 concurrent players per day, with a peak under 2,000, simply isn't good enough. That's a clear sign the game has fundamentally failed to engage or excite anyone.
Remedy's communications director Thomas Puha said in an interview that one reason for the poor sales is that Control (which shares its universe with Firebreak) simply isn't a well-known enough brand to generate hype. Still, despite the rocky start, they say they're committed to continuing support for the title - with updates and improvements planned.
As of this writing, fewer than 100 people are playing Firebreak on Steam - and this is less than two weeks after launch. Whether Remedy will really keep breathing artificial life into something nobody seems to care about remains to be seen. Most likely, Firebreak will just become another footnote that nobody remembers three months from now.
Did you have any hopes for Firebreak, or was this outcome pretty much expected?