People Can Fly has revealed in a press release that they have cancelled Project Dagger.
People Can Fly initially announced the existence of Project Dagger in 2022, actually revealing their full game pipeline on their website. Project Dagger was described as a “AAA action RPG being made for a “wider audience,” with a budget between 40 and 60 million Euros. At the time, they named Take-Two Interactive as their publisher, and had a projected release date of 2023.
And then in September 2023, Take-Two pulled out of the deal, leaving People Can Fly to find a new publisher or to do it themselves. That also meant that Project Dagger lost that 40-60 million Euros worth of funding. It is notable that six months after this decision, Take-Two announced that they had acquired Gearbox Software.
For those who were curious, it does seem likely that Take-Two planned to acquire Gearbox, and in doing so made the decision to drop Project Dagger. Embracer Group announced plans to restructure their business in June 2023, about three months before Take-Two dropped Project Dagger.
The arrangement did allow People Can Fly to keep working on the game, but now they have chosen to cancel it themselves. In their press release, People Can Fly said this:
“The discontinuation of work on the Project is the result of re-analysis of the development plans for projects implemented by the capital group of PCF Group S.A. (the “Group”) and introducing changes to these plans in connection with the unsatisfactory results of the evaluation of the scope and commercial potential of the Project after redefining the direction of the game’s development, which the Company informed about in current report No. 59/2023 of 28 November 2023.”
Game Developer explains in detail what happened in November 2023 in their report about this cancellation. At the time Take-Two dropped the project, People Can Fly was shifting engines from Unreal 4 to Unreal 5. But on November, they announced they would be ‘redefining’ the project after taking feedback from an external evaluation. The results were serious enough that they already announced a delay to 2025 or 2026.
We don’t know the full details on what happened behind the scenes, but it sounds like Project Dagger simply did not come together to be a certain success for the company. After the release of Outriders, People Can Fly can’t afford to take wild risks. They had already laid off 30 employees after choosing to make Project Gemini a smaller game.
Thankfully, this press release does not come with any news of more layoffs (knock on wood), presumably because People Can Fly has enough games in the pipeline to keep their staff gainfully employed.
They also claimed this cancellation will only result in one-off, non-monetary impairment losses that won’t affect their EBITDA. So, with all things considered, it sounds like this was actually good news, as the studio can still afford to move on and find more certain success elsewhere. We hope to talk about People Can Fly’s next hit game in the future.
