Folks Can Fly, the Polish developer of video games together with Bulletstorm, Gears of Warfare: Judgment, and Outriders, has laid off greater than 120 staff, a transfer the studio stated was crucial “as exterior market pressures endured past our forecasts.”
Folks Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski stated is a message posted to social media that the layoffs are the results of a change within the studio’s self-publishing technique, which incorporates the suspension of Undertaking Victoria, a discount of the workforce engaged on Undertaking Bifrost, and “restructuring a few of our supporting groups.”
“The videogame market remains to be evolving, and we have now to regulate with the place issues are at the moment,” Folks Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski wrote. “We’re redoubling our efforts with new work for rent engagements and specializing in the event of a single unbiased recreation.
“We imagine in our groups, video games, and their potential, and we stay extraordinarily dedicated to persevering with that journey, however we have to tailor our plans to our monetary capability.”
Folks Can Fly’s web site says the studio has greater than 700 staff, presumably a pre-layoff headcount.
Neither Undertaking Victoria nor Bifrost had been publicly revealed, however Folks Can Fly have been engaged on each for at the very least two years. The studio referenced the video games when it introduced the tip of its publishing cope with Take-Two Interactive in 2022, saying it could self-publish each. Nevertheless it’s had a tough time of issues since then: Undertaking Dagger, which it had been growing in partnership with Take-Two since 2020, bumped into hassle in 2023 and was finally axed earlier this yr.
Layoffs suck, and the decimation of the videogame trade we have witnessed over the previous two years is an ongoing indictment of govt management just about throughout the board. However as we stated final week when Ubisoft, Torn Banner, and Candy Bandits imposed layoffs of their very own—which got here simply weeks after layoffs at different studios together with Thunderful, Humanoid Origin, Reflector Leisure, and Worlds Untold, and simply earlier than layoffs at Illfonic and Deck 9, in case there was any doubt that there is one thing very unsuitable right here—the timing of those cuts, which come simply 15 days earlier than Christmas, makes them particularly ugly.
This would be the second spherical of layoffs at Folks Can Fly in 2024—the primary occurred in January, when greater than 30 folks engaged on one more venture, codenamed Gemini, had been let go.
