Yesterday afternoon, Remedy held a special one-hour livestream celebrating the release of FBC: Firebreak's new Rogue Protocol update! The broadcast allowed the studio to pull back the curtain on how the update came to be, the inspirations for the team, and the key aspects they wanted to ensure stayed true.
The livestream featured Julius Fondem (Community Manager), Mike Kayatta (Game Director) and Simon Rozner (Principal Game Designer). They were joined offscreen by firebreakers Miika Huttunen (Senior Communications Manager) and Francisco Da Silva (Junior QA Tester) for the Endless Shift runs. They were also joined by a surprise Josh Wichard (the voice actor for Jerry Standish) in the chat.
Introducing Rogue Protocol, Kayatta stated in the livestream that "Endless Shift is the highlighted new mode that we've placed into Firebreak. At its core, it's a combination of wave-survival and rougelite mode, where players are tasked with seeing how long they can survive against the increasing threat of Hiss, who are getting stronger and faster. While [Firebreakers] absorb some of that Corruption and get stronger, they last as long as they can, and then inevitably die... with rewards!" Enhancements and exclusive variant cosmetics are both rewards that the players can obtain solely through the Endless Shift mode, with the livestream later showing how they are collected.
With the team being huge fans of multiplayer experiences, Kayatta later continues, describing the initial discussions for the mode, "In its earliest incarnation, we really wanted to look at ways to increase the ways players can interact with Firebreak and have fun. And we really love all the crisies that we've built, and they've been a ton of fun trying to figure them out, and we kinda just decided at some point that we wanted to give people looking for more of a rounded experience, other things to do in the space, a new way of engaging with the game. We, and I'm sure tons of people in the world, are big fans of different roguelite experiences [...] and ultimately, wanted to explore what it would be like if we brought something like that forward into Firebreak." To ensure that the FBC: Firebreak remained true to its tone and pick-up-and-play capabilities, the game underwent a lot of testing to ensure the right balance of challenge and reward. During the livestream's first run, Rozner shared that the highest score internally was Wave 46, played with just two people.
Check out the full FBC: Firebreak January 2026 Update below or on the studio's YouTube, HERE!
