Remedy Entertainment has announced in a letter to investors that it is canceling the development of a premium co-op shooter known as Codename Kestrel to focus on its existing franchises.

Since 2021, the company has been working on the game together with Tencent, but at the end of last year, it was decided to change the approach to the game. Then the project changed its name from Vanguard to Kestrel and stopped being free.

Now, Remedy and Tencent have decided to cancel the game’s development entirely to have more opportunities to focus on other franchise games.

The team that worked on Kestrel will be redirected to other projects in the pipeline. In addition, the planned investment needs for Kestrel are being removed and Remedy’s overall recruitment needs are being reduced.

“Codename Kestrel showed early promise, but the project was still in its early concept stage. Our other projects have advanced well and are moving to the next stages of development, and increasing focus on them provides us with benefits. We can reallocate talented Kestrel developers to these other game projects, and many of our support functions get additional focus on their operations. This is yet another means to ensure that our game projects continue advancing well. I want to thank our Kestrel development team. Though we decided to discontinue the project for wider Remedy benefits, our team has done good work and provided us with valuable learnings. I also want to thank Tencent for their partnership so far. They have been very professional and supportive,” says Remedy’s CEO Tero Virtala.