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 mentioned was obligatory “as exterior market pressures endured past our forecasts.”
Folks Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski mentioned 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 Mission Victoria, a discount of the workforce engaged on Mission Bifrost, and “restructuring a few of our supporting groups.”
“The videogame market continues to be evolving, and we now have to regulate with the place issues are as we speak,” 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 impartial 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 Mission 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 top of its publishing cope with Take-Two Interactive in 2022, saying it could self-publish each. However it’s had a tough time of issues since then: Mission Dagger, which it had been growing in partnership with Take-Two since 2020, bumped into hassle in 2023 and was ultimately axed earlier this 12 months.
Layoffs suck, and the decimation of the videogame business we have witnessed over the previous two years is an ongoing indictment of government management just about throughout the board. However as we mentioned 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 flawed 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 individuals engaged on yet one more challenge, codenamed Gemini, have been let go.
