People Can Fly, the developer behind Gears of War: E-Day and Outriders, will be forced to lay off some of its team members following the suspension of two development projects. The company’s CEO, Sebastian Wojciechowski, shared an official message earlier today addressing the reason for the project suspension.
“Today we made a very difficult decision to suspend the development of Project Gemini and Project Bifrost – the relevant current reports have been released to the market,” Wojciechowski said.
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“The suspension of the Gemini project is a consequence of the fact that the publisher has not presented us with a draft of the subsequent content rider to the Publishing Agreement covering the terms and conditions of further milestones on project Gemini and the lack of communication from the Publisher as to its willingness to continue or terminate the Gemini project”.
The same reason played a part in the suspension of Project Bifrost. The statement added that “the analysis of the Group’s cash flow, which showed a lack of prospects for securing organizational resources and funds necessary to continue the production and release of this project”.
According to reports, project Gemini is an unannounced game that was supposed to be published by Square Enix, while project Bifrost, also unannounced, was a VR game. In January, People Can Fly laid off 30 developers working on Project Gemini.
Based on the decision to suspend both projects, the teams working on them would no longer be needed. Although the exact number of people that would be impacted was not mentioned in the official statement, Wojciechowski said scaling down “hurts the most”.
People Can Fly has been shedding employees for months
Concept artist Lipan Liu was a part of Project Bifrost for two weeks before being laid off. Sharing his experience on LinkedIn, Liu said, “Although I was only part of Project Bifrost for two short weeks before being laid off, I could clearly see how talented, passionate, and capable the team was. It was a group filled with amazing developers, and the project itself had so much potential. It’s hard to believe it ended this way.”
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There seems to be a resurgence of layoffs after months of stability. Last week, EA shut down Cliffhanger Games and cancelled a Black Panther game that was in development. We also reported layoffs at Playtonic.
People Can Fly is working on multiple projects. One of them is Gears of War: E-Day, and another is an unannounced project based on a PlayStation IP. In April, the studio announced the cancellation of Project Dagger, a co-op action RPG, which had been in development for years.
What do you think about the suspension of projects Bifrost and Gemini? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
