Game developer People Can Fly has laid off around thirty developers from an unannounced Square Enix game codenamed Project Gemini. The news was broken yesterday by Kotaku, which obtained an email sent by Development Director Adam Alker to his fellow employees. Alker chalked the layoffs to budget limitations and a decision to shrink the game’s scope.
People Can Fly had previously told investors it was targeting a 2026 launch window for Project Gemini. It’s presently unclear whether the layoffs will affect the release window as well.
While based in Poland, the studio has offices in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Ireland (the latter for its publishing arm). The headcount was over 600 as of last year, with multiple projects on the way in the next two years, including three self-published ones: Project Dagger (previously developed for Take-Two before the companies split ways), Project Bifrost, and Project Victoria.
Last June, People Can Fly also announced it would develop a new game for Microsoft. Codenamed Project Maverick, it will be developed with a 30-50 million budget based on an IP owned by Microsoft, which we speculated could be Gears of War given the studio’s previous expertise in making Gears of War: Judgment. Additionally, the studio is working on another game codenamed Project Rea. Last we heard, that one was still in the concept/ideation stage and is therefore still far away from release.
People Can Fly had previously worked with Square Enix on 2011’s looter shooter game Outriders. However, the company never got any royalties from its work. It would stand to reason that they negotiated different rules for this contract.
Anyway, they are just one of several studios already affected by layoffs in the first month of 2024. Riot Games just laid off around 530 employees, and Black Forest Games (Destroy All Humans! remake) also cut around 50 jobs, per Kotaku. Moreover, the entire Piranha Bytes is currently at risk as they desperately try to pitch their next game to another publisher.
