“The PCF SA (People Can Fly) Group has informed (…) that it has received from Take-Two Interactive a letter of intent to terminate the development and publishing agreement through mutual agreement between the parties. This deal is for Project Dagger, a new action-adventure IP that has been in development for two years – under the leadership of the New York-based People Can Fly team.” is it thus declared in the introduction to the press release published by People Can Fly on its official site. A surprising announcement which therefore sees the Polish company dropped by its publisher for reasons not explained here. If Take-Two Interactive is indeed at the initiative of the rupture, the press release is obviously careful not to evoke the backstage of this decision.
For People Can Fly, this means taking over development on its own and branching out into self-publishing, as the statement again explains: “The publisher has also not declared its intention to exercise its option to buy back the intellectual property rights on the products produced under the agreement. Therefore, People Can Fly has retained the intellectual property rights of Project Dagger as the sole owner of such rights and is now determined to develop the project on its own.“
An upheaval that seems to accommodate Sebastian Wojciechowski, CEO of People Can Fly, who declares, visibly serene: “I guess we’ll part ways on good terms, and I don’t see why we couldn’t work with Take-Two on another project in the future. We strongly believe in the potential of Project Dagger and are now committed to continuing its development as part of our self-publishing pipeline. The game is still in pre-production – our team is now focused on finishing combat and gameplay loops as well as migrating from UE4 to UE5. I am aware that this decision will entail additional investments for us, but self-publishing is part of our strategy. Of course, we don’t rule out working with a new publisher if it creates a compelling business opportunity.“
If its CEO announces that he is looking forward to the following events with confidence, People Can Fly seems to be going through some turbulence since the commercial failure of Outriders, for which he has, as far as we know, received no royalties from Square Enix. With no less than seven projects in development, including one for Square Enix – surprisingly – and now three in self-publishing People Can Fly will have to be strong enough to hold its new line, explained at the very end of the press release: “People Can Fly maintains its recently updated strategy of letting the Group release one game per year, developed either in cooperation with a publisher or in the self-publishing model from 2024.“.