People Can Fly, best known for Bulletstorm and Outriders, has abandoned two of its in-development projects and blames Square Enix for at least one of them falling through. A triple-A blockbuster codenamed Gemini has been “suspended” due to a “lack of communication” from the Final Fantasy publisher.
“The suspension of Gemini project is a consequence of the fact that the Publisher has not presented us with a draft of the subsequent content rider to the Publishing Agreement covering the terms and conditions of further milestones on project Gemini and the lack of communication from the Publisher as to its willingness to continue or terminate the Gemini Project,” People Can Fly wrote in a statement on June 1.
We don’t know much about what Gemini was, but it seems like the game has been in trouble for some time. Kotaku reported last year that People Can Fly cut 30 developers from the project with an impact to the scope of the game’s campaign as a result. Then last December, the Polish-based game maker that got its start with 2004’s Painkiller announced 120 additional layoffs as it restructured additional in-development projects.
People Can Fly previously threatened back in June 2024 that Gemini could be at risk if it didn’t come to a revised commercial agreement with Square Enix. It’s unclear if that had to do with the scope, cost, direction of the game, or all of the above. The breakdown comes as the Japanese publisher is scaling back various projects and initiatives to double down on its core franchises, which for now appear to mostly be Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, and ports, remasters and remakes of its extensive back catalog of older games.
Outriders was a loot shooter that looked at first blush like Bungie’s Destiny 2 but was more of a self-contained RPG shooter campaign in the vein of a Borderlands. Its grim futuristic setting and story felt like a mashup of Avatar and Heart of Darkness and it didn’t quite hang together, but the third-person shooting and cooldown ability-based buildcrafting and gameplay was excellent. Square Enix wasn’t impressed, however. It was another in a long list of games that “disappointed” the publisher when it came to sales, with People Can Fly reportedly not even getting royalties from the project.
.
Source link
