2024 was already the most devastating year for video game employment in a very long time, but there are still three weeks to go before closing this chapter, and the layoff counter continues to tick. Through its CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski, the People Can Fly studio announces that it is suspending the Victoria project and significantly reducing the scale of the Bifrost project with restructuring in the support teams, leading to 120 layoffs in total. The distribution of these layoffs in the different branches around the world (Chicago, Krakow, Newcastle, etc.) is not currently known.
In his official announcement, Wojciechowski that “ external market pressures persisted despite [leurs] initial estimates “, and that management failed to foresee the evolution of the industry. As a result, since finances are dry, People Can Fly will focus on a single self-publishing project while other developers will resume subcontracting activities in order to keep things smooth. “ We believe in our team, our games and their potential, and we still have every intention of continuing this journey, but our plans must adapt to our financial capabilities. »
For the People Can Fly studio, it’s a real dark year. The developer started 2024 with 50 layoffs on the Gemini project, in partnership with Square Enix, which wanted to reduce the scale of the project. Then, in April, it was the mysterious Dagger project which went into the grave after a complicated development, between the abandonment of the publisher Take-Two in 2022 and a change of direction at the end of 2023 to try to establish itself. adapt to trends.
Finally, there remains the Maverick project, developed in partnership with Microsoft, which seems to be following its merry path. Hopefully the studio can bounce back even though it has had its eyes bigger than its stomach in recent years.
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