People Can Fly cancels two projects and will lay off workers

People Can Fly has announced it has cancelled two in-development projects and will undergo a round of layoffs. 

“Today we made the very difficult decision to suspend the development of project Gemini and project Bifrost,” wrote People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski on the studio’s LinkedIn page. “As a result we have to significantly regroup as a studio and scale down our teams.” Little was known publicly about either project.

The Warsaw-based studio known for Bulletstorm and Outriders  has been having difficulties with some of its in-development projects for a while now. In December, a notice from the company stated it would suspend production on a project codenamed Victoria and reduce the team working on Bifrost. In today’s announcement, Wojciechowski wrote that cancellations were due to an unspecified publisher’s failure to present necessary publishing agreements, and a “lack of communication” regarding whether or not the publisher wants to continue with development. 

The statement also attributed the cancellations to issues with the publisher’s cash flow stating it, “showed a lack of prospects for securing organizational resources and funds necessary to continue the production.” And the name of the publisher? It isn’t exactly a mystery. In the developer’s statement from December, People Can Fly named its collaborator on Project Gemini as Square Enix.

People Can Fly — which was acquired by Epic Games in 2012 before going independent again in 2015 — will continue development on Xbox’s next Gears of War title, Gears of War: E-Day, as a partner studio working with The Coalition.