Take Two Interactive has ended their involvement with upcoming action adventure game Project Dagger.
The publisher sent Project Dagger‘s developer, People Can Fly Group S.A, a letter of intent to terminate the development and publishing agreement by means of mutual understanding between the parties.
People Can Fly’s CEO, Sebastian Wojciechowski, released this statement on the matter:
“I assume we will part on good terms, and I don’t see reasons why we couldn’t work with Take-Two on some other project in the future. We strongly believe in the Project Dagger’s potential and are now committed to continue its development within our self-publishing pipeline. The game is still in pre-production – our team is now focusing on closing combat and game loops and migrate from UE4 to UE5. I’m conscious that this decision will add investments on us, but self-publishing is part of our strategy. Of course, we are not ruling out working with a new publisher if this creates a compelling business opportunity.”
As the publisher, Take Two Interactive did give People Can Fly an advance to work on the game. People Can Fly has made it public that they have not yet decided on the terms of the settlement to agree on the amount that they would return on the advance. People Can Fly seemingly has some leeway in this regard, as the amount they will be returning now can change dependent on the terms that the final game will eventually be released. Apparently Take Two can still expect to get some return on investment if it gets released and becomes successful. Subsequently, they expect different returns based on if the game is a full retail release, free-to-play, or uses some other pricing model.
People Can Fly Group S.A., is a Warsaw based developer, that made their name with the Painkiller horror FPS games from the mid-2000s. The company also worked on the Gears of War games and produced Bulletstorm. Notably, the company was actually owned by Epic Games and rebranded as Epic Games Poland between 2013 to 2015. From this period and even after going independent again, the studio helped develop Fortnite, which officially launched in 2017. Their curious most recent release, the co-op action RPG Outriders, is either a game that has made no profits to pay People Can Fly, or is one of publisher Square Enix’s most successful recent projects, depending on which statement you read.
While this is a huge blow for the studio, People Can Fly are a veteran studio that have already proven themselves in the industry. They retain the rights to Project Dagger so they can continue work on the game as they wish. However, given that they have four other projects in development, it may be more likely that they pause or suspend work on Project Dagger in favor of their other projects. Fans that are looking forward this one shouldn’t give up hope, as it also is feasible that the studio finds a new publisher and restarts work soon enough.
Source: TheGamer
