People Can Fly lays off more than 120 employees as it cuts back on in-development games: 'We need to tailor our plans to our financial capacity'

3 weeks ago 14

(Image credit: People Can Fly)

People Can Fly, the Polish developer of games including Bulletstorm, Gears of War: Judgment, and Outriders, has laid off more than 120 employees, a move the studio said was necessary "as external market pressures persisted beyond our forecasts."

People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski said is a message posted to social media that the layoffs are the result of a change in the studio's self-publishing strategy, which includes the suspension of Project Victoria, a reduction of the team working on Project Bifrost, and "restructuring some of our supporting teams."

"The videogame market is still evolving, and we have to adjust with where things are today," People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski wrote. "We are redoubling our efforts with new work for hire engagements and focusing on the development of a single independent game.

"We believe in our teams, games, and their potential, and we remain extremely committed to continuing that journey, but we need to tailor our plans to our financial capacity."

People Can Fly's website says the studio has more than 700 employees, presumably a pre-layoff headcount.

Today, we made a very difficult decision to reduce our self-publishing strategy by suspending Project Victoria, scaling down our team on Project Bifrost and restructuring some of our supporting teams at People Can Fly. We are deeply saddened by the fact that this situation means suspending or parting ways with more than 120 talented Aviators, colleagues who we enjoyed having as part of our team.

Neither Project Victoria nor Bifrost had been publicly revealed, but People Can Fly have been working on both for at least two years. The studio referenced the games when it announced the end of its publishing deal with Take-Two Interactive in 2022, saying it would self-publish both. But it's had a rough time of things since then: Project Dagger, which it had been developing in partnership with Take-Two since 2020, ran into trouble in 2023 and was eventually axed earlier this year.

Layoffs suck, and the decimation of the videogame industry we've witnessed over the past two years is an ongoing indictment of executive leadership virtually across the board. But as we said last week when Ubisoft, Torn Banner, and Sweet Bandits imposed layoffs of their own—which came just weeks after layoffs at other studios including Thunderful, Humanoid Origin, Reflector Entertainment, and Worlds Untold, and just before layoffs at Illfonic and Deck Nine, in case there was any doubt that there's something very wrong here—the timing of these cuts, which come just 15 days before Christmas, makes them especially ugly.

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This will be the second round of layoffs at People Can Fly in 2024—the first happened in January, when more than 30 people working on yet another project, codenamed Gemini, were let go.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

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