American horror novelist Alan Wake finds unlikely new publisher, Finnish video game company Remedy Entertainment

Working with publishers led the the novelist Alan Wake to flip his lid and get chased by ghosts or summat, so Big Al must be thrilled to escape his previous publisher contract. Alan Wake developers Remedy Entertainment have announced they've gained the publishing rights to the third-person spooker-shooters, which were previously held by Microsoft. This self-publishing seems more a happy consequence of old contract conditions rather than a sign that they're planning to make a new one, but it should give them more power to do whatever they dang well please with Al.

The Finnish studio's latest announcement for investors today casually mentions that "the publishing rights of Alan Wake games are reverted to Remedy."

Given that the games are available on PC, with or without DRM, there's not much Remedy can do with the existent Alans Wake for us. Maybe this could see them on PlayStations? Dunno. It's none of our business, I suppose.

Alans Wake did vanish from sale in May 2017 when licenses for songs on the soundtrack expired. They did return to stores in October 2018, with Remedy noting that Microsoft played a part in that as the publisher. Someone like Microsoft can throw a lot of weight around as a publisher, but that weight can be a problem too. Or not. Whatever. It doesn't matter anymore.

Remedy are currently busy making Control, the sci-fi shooter where, as Alice Bee explained, "you throw fire extinguishers at people and that's great." Supposedly they've been kicking around ideas for an Alan Wake TV show too.

If you've not woken yet, the Alan Wake games have a 70% discount in the Steam Summer Sale right now.