Outriders Developer People Can Fly Cancels Two Projects, Says Will 'Scale Down' Teams

People Can Fly, the Polish game developer behind games like Bulletstorm, Gears of War: Judgment and Outriders, has cancelled two unannounced projects and said it will downsize its teams. The studio cited disagreements with the publisher and insufficient funds to continue production as reasons behind the decision. Last year, People Can Fly laid off over 150 employees in two rounds of job cuts.

People Can Fly Cancels 2 Games

In a statement shared on LinkedIn on Sunday, People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski confirmed that the studio was cancelling two games — project Gemini and project Bifrost. The company had not previously shared details about the two in-development games.

“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 in the statement.

“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 milestone on project Gemini and the lack of communication from the Publisher as to its willingness to continue or terminate the Gemini project.

“Project Bifrost was suspended due to the above and the analysis of the Group's cash flow, which showed a lack of prospects for securing organisational resources and funds necessary to continue the production and release of this project.”

The executive also suggested the cancellations would lead to reorganisation and layoffs, but did not specify the number of employees likely to be impacted.

“As a result, we have to significantly regroup as a studio and scale down our teams, which hurts the most,” Wojciechowski said. “We wish to express our deepest regret and sadness over how these events have unfolded and our sincere gratitude for everyone's contribution up to this point.”

Wojciechowski did not specify the unnamed publisher in the statement, but People Can Fly last worked with Square Enix on Outriders. The studio is currently working on multiple projects, including Gears of War: E-Day for Xbox Game Studios and a new game based on a Sony IP, codenamed project Delta.

Layoffs in Games industry

Last year, People Can Fly laid off over 150 employees in two rounds of retrenchment. In January 2024, the studio reportedly laid off over 30 employees. Later in December, Wojciechowski announced the company was suspending production on one of its projects and laying off over 120 workers.

The studio's latest round of job cuts follows a wave of game cancellations, studio shutdowns and layoffs in the video game industry. Last week, Electronic Arts cancelled its Black Panther game and laid off an unspecified number of employees across different teams, marking the third round of job cuts at the company this year.

In February, Warner Bros. shut down three of its game studios, including Monolith Productions, and cancelled its Wonder Woman game that had spent years in development.