People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski has announced the cancellation of Project Gemini and Project Bifrost.
The company shared Wojciechowski’s statement on Twitter:
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.
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.
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 organizational resources and funds necessary to continue the production and release of this project.
As a result, we have to significantly regroup as a studio and scale down our teams, which hurts the most.
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.
Project Gemini was to be their second title with Square Enix, and would be at the same scale as their online co-op game together, Outriders. Square Enix was supposed to own the publishing rights, but relations between developer and publisher have been frosty since that game’s failure. In 2021, People Can Fly claimed that Square Enix had not paid them royalties for the game. Wojciechowski’s statement today paints a picture that the Japanese conglomerate had been ghosting them for years.
This had been going on before Square Enix announcing plans to shift towards making less games and going multiplatform, as well as their ongoing reorganization. While it isn’t entirely clear what is going on between Square Enix and People Can Fly, it seems safe to say that their business relationship has effectively ended.
People Can Fly revealed Project Bifrost in 2022. They were going to publish and release it on their own, but it seemed that was contingent on the success of their other games. Unfortunately, this is only the latest chapter in People Can Fly’s struggles since Outriders. Their plans to regroup by greenlighting multiple projects has not worked out, as they have been laying off developers and cancelling games in the past three years.
They do have one saving grace, which is Project Maverick, AKA their co-production with The Coalition, Gears of War: E-Day. This seems to be a much safer bet that will keep the studio alive, but it wasn’t enough to protect them from the losses that they had been trying to avert since Outriders.
As always, we wish the best for the staff who are about to leave People Can Fly, and we hope they can find placement back in the video game industry.
