Contrary to some depressing rumors from last week, one insider is now claiming that the KOTOR Remake is still being actively developed. By no accounts does it look promising, but at least it's not dead.
In mid-November, the CEO of Embracer, Lars Wingefors, announced that he no longer wanted to talk about the KOTOR Remake, a project being developed by one of Embracer's subsidiaries, Saber Interactive. When asked about the game in a financial call with shareholders, he said "anything I say to this becomes a headline", and left it at that.
Then, a few days later, industry insider Jeff Grubb claimed that no-one was working on the game at all:
I just want to clear it up. This game is not being worked on right now. Full stop. This game is not being worked on in any way at any studio.
So far, so disappointing.
But like a knight in shining armor, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier emerged (on the ResetEra forums, of all places). Schreier said that he had spoken to two employees who were able to confirm that they were still working on the game. A new hope?
Current state of the KOTOR Remake
On the balance of probability, we think you can believe Schreier's claim that developers are currently working on the game. We are big fans of Jeff Grubb, but Schreier is very much the gold standard as far as sources go.
Although, as he also makes clear in the ResetEra post, that "'Is it alive?'" and 'Will it ever actually come out?' are two very different questions". People may be working on it, but let's not forget that back in June of this year, the Embracer Group announced their restructuring program.
As they explicitly outline in their press release, one of their measures involves "the closing of studios and termination of projects" until March 2024. The KOTOR Remake could very easily become one of those projects, given how expensive such a vast game will be to bring to a 2023 standard.
At present, the KOTOR Remake isn't listed on the Saber Interactive website alongside their other games-in-progress, and there have been no posts about the game on their socials (@SaberGames). People may be working on the KOTOR Remake, but we would be surprised if it isn't cancelled before March 2024. We can only wait and see.