Alan Wake 1 was a commercial flop. Other publishers thought the IP was a one-way ticket to losses. The Epic deal wasn’t the first time Remedy tried making AW2, they tried to talk Microsoft into it at first but they refused to touch the IP which led to Quantum Break instead.
It’s not that publishers didn’t trust Remedy so much as they wanted them to do other IPs instead of wasting money on a passion project like Alan Wake.
Alan Wake 1 was a commercial flop. Other publishers thought the IP was a one-way ticket to losses. The Epic deal wasn’t the first time Remedy tried making AW2, they tried to talk Microsoft into it at first but they refused to touch the IP which led to Quantum Break instead.
It’s not that publishers didn’t trust Remedy so much as they wanted them to do other IPs instead of wasting money on a passion project like Alan Wake.