Developer People Can Fly has just received another round of bad news. After learning earlier this year that the studio didn’t make a penny of profit from Outriders during 2021, it’s now been revealed that Rockstar and 2K Games’ parent company, Take-Two, have made clear the their intention to abandon the publication of PCF’s follow-up game, at present. known as Project Dagger.
In a statement posted on its website, People Can Fly announced that it “has received from Take-Two Interactive a letter of intent to terminate the development and publishing agreement by mutual understanding between the two parties.” Referring to Project Dagger, his next action adventure two years into development, he continues to describe a potentially messy situation where the two sides will now negotiate how Take-Two will recoup its investment. However, PCF claims this will “strengthen” self-publishing plans.
PCF is a developer who has worked with a wide range of publishers. Their 2011 hit Bulletstorm first came through EA (later republished in 2017 by Gearbox), while last year’s Outriders was published by Square Enix. The company, with studios in Poland, the UK, the US and Canada, also has another game currently in development with Square Enix, and two more unannounced self-published games, as well as two more VR projects. Project Dagger is run by the developer’s New York-based arm, and PCF has made clear its intentions to now add it to its own publishing plans.
This is possible, the statement explains, because Take-Two “has not declared an intention to exercise its option to purchase the intellectual property rights to the project,” which is good news for PCF, but it also possibly demonstrates Take-Two’s potential. lack of confidence in the game.
We’ve reached out to both Take-Two and People Can Fly for more details, and we’ll update this article if they hear back.
PCF maintains that their relationship with Take-Two is still good and they say they would be happy to publish with them again. “I guess we’ll part ways on good terms,” says PCF CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski. “I see no reason why we couldn’t work with Take-Two on some other project in the future.” He also asserts his confidence in Project Dagger, which he says is “still in pre-production,” with the team “focusing on closing combat and gameplay loops and migrating.” [sic] from EU4 to EU5”.
The statement ends by providing estimated financial data for the first half of 2022, with revenue of PLN 90.6 million ($18.3 million ($25) million) and net profit of PLN 25.5 million ($5 .2 million dollars ($7) million).