Remedy Sells a Million Resonants — and Still Owes Annapurna
The first self-published AAA launch triples revenue and turns EBIT positive, but platform fees and partner royalties consume over half of gross game sales before recoupment.
REMEDY.HE · Earnings Call · 2026-11-03
The quarter the P&L learned to speak publisher
Remedy has spent years telling investors it wanted to own its own future. Q3 2026 is the first quarter the income statement actually says it. Revenue of EUR 39.6 million was more than triple the year-ago period, EBITDA came in at EUR 6.8 million and operating profit was a slender but positive EUR 0.6 million — flattered by the EUR 14.9 million FBC: Firebreak impairment sitting in the base period, but positive on its own arithmetic all the same. “Revenue grew to EUR 39.6 million, more than 3x the level of a year ago.” — Jean-Charles Gaudechon, CEO · 2026-11-03
The vocabulary shift in the curated keyword set is almost as telling as the numbers. A year ago this company's calls read like a pre-launch hype ledger — preorders, wish lists, Chinese localisation, ChinaJoy. This quarter the top of the list is accounting: platform fees, royalty expenses, physical unit sell-in, capitalized development costs rolling into depreciation. The company has changed the questions it is obliged to answer — from whether people want the game to whether the money actually lands.
CFO Santtu Kallionpaa spent the opening of his section walking investors through how a self-published sale walks down the P&L: digital revenue booked after VAT, then platform fees and partner royalties deducted in step with sales, then depreciation of capitalised development and acquired publishing rights. It is a mechanics tutorial Remedy has never needed before, and it is the hinge on which this quarter's interpretation turns.
A million copies, and a recoupment cliff
CONTROL Resonant launched digitally on 24 September; the physical edition slipped to 15 October, and on that same day the game crossed one million copies. “On the same day, CONTROL Resonant passed 1 million copies sold worldwide. That makes it officially the fastest-selling game in Remedy's history.” — Jean-Charles Gaudechon, CEO · 2026-11-03 A Metacritic of 83, 91% positive on Steam, 4.7–4.8 storefront scores, roughly a 50/50 PC-to-console split, and — the metric management seems proudest of — close to half of buyers new to Control and new to Remedy. The Control fans core did not carry the launch alone.
But one million is a sell-in number, not sell-through, as the CFO confirmed under questioning. The money map matters more than the unit count. Revenue-related partner expenses were EUR 18.9 million against EUR 35.3 million of game sales and royalties — meaning well over half of gross game revenue leaves the building before Remedy sees it, split roughly evenly between platform fees and Annapurna's take, with partner royalties edging higher. And the recoup is nowhere near done. “Regarding the development cost, we can say that the significant part of them is still end of Q3, not paid back.” — Santtu Kallionpaa, CFO · 2026-11-03 Remember the denominator here: only preorders and seven days of sales fell into the quarter.
The same arithmetic dogs the back catalogue. Alan Wake 2 is now fully depreciated — every royalty lands straight on the bottom line — but the CEO-adjacent admission was that cumulative spend on finishing the game, including uncapitalised costs, has still not been fully covered. Two franchises, both climbing out of their own holes.
Which makes the conversion queue the number to watch. “So it's the outstanding wish list amount, which means it's a net amount... 2.4 million is actually 2.4 million is what we have left at the moment.” — Santtu Kallionpaa, CFO · 2026-11-03 In August, 1.5 million wish lists was an achievement. Now 2.4 million is a backlog that has to be worked through with promotions and word of mouth in a crowded Q4 window, alongside a B2B deal with NVIDIA that was fully booked in the quarter and cannot help again.
Europe, price, and the vanishing 2027
Three soft spots. The first is geography. The United States took nearly half of sales, Chinese-speaking regions were second on PC, and Brazil landed in the console top three — but Europe, Remedy's cultural home, did not feature, and the CEO did not pretend otherwise. “I would have liked to see Europe closer to our heart, closer to our culture to be higher in this ranking... Is it product? Is it marketing campaign? Did we -- were we very focused on other regions, not enough on Europe?” — Jean-Charles Gaudechon, CEO · 2026-11-03 For a company that just ran the largest marketing campaign in its history, a soft home continent is an uncomfortable data point about the strategy rather than the game.
The second is monetization. Remedy deliberately priced Resonant aggressively, ruled out microtransactions for their own sake, and stuck with a single-player, low-friction proposition. Defensible for a fanbase; awkward when a recoup clock is running. There is also the admission that exclusive advanced access on PlayStation will be re-examined — “Today and moving forward, we will do a deep analysis on whether this is something we want to keep doing or not.” — Jean-Charles Gaudechon, CEO · 2026-11-03 — plus an apology for the physical-edition delay, which pushed physical copy buyers to wait.
The third matters most. In November 2024 the Board set a target of doubling 2024 revenue with at least a 30% EBITDA margin by 2027. Asked whether Resonant's trajectory puts that on track, the new CEO deferred entirely: “The 2027 outlook would come from the Board around February, I believe, and that will give you a better sense of what the future holds in terms of long-term targets.” — Jean-Charles Gaudechon, CEO · 2026-11-03 Twelve months ago, the interim CEO answered the identical question with confidence — “What makes me confident is that we have a strong portfolio of products coming up and how they are proceeding.” — Markus Maki, Interim CEO · 2025-10-29 A portfolio promise then; a Board agenda item now. That is the quiet tension inside an otherwise triumphant quarter.
What Q4 has to prove
Year to date, revenue of EUR 62.9 million is an all-time high, EBITDA of EUR 7.3 million is down year over year, and EBIT is still negative at EUR 2.3 million. Marketing peaked in Q3 and management was explicit that Q4 spend drops clearly — so the fourth quarter must deliver post-launch sales without launch-level noise. Full-year guidance is unchanged: revenue and EBITDA both up.
Remedy has now proven two things it had not proven before: it can make a best-in-class game, and it can ship and market it itself. What it has not yet proven is that self publishing is more profitable than the partner model it replaced. This quarter is the first real data point in that experiment — a milestone, not a verdict — and the number that will settle it is the speed at which EUR 18.9 million of partner expenses stops being a permanent tax on every unit sold.