People Can Fly lays off more than 120 people

As you probably know, the last two years have been downright brutal for the people who create our entertainment, and the layoffs have been piling up. In 2023, 10,500 people were fired according to Game Industry Layoffs, and 2024 has unfortunately been much worse with a whopping 14,600 layoffs.

And just because we're approaching Christmas, some well-deserved time off and a new year, the misery doesn't stop. During late Tuesday evening, People Can Fly announced via Instagram that they unfortunately have to lay off as many as 120 people. CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski explains the situation:

"Today, we made a very difficult decision to reduce our self-publishing strategy by suspending Project Victoria, scaling down our team on Project Bifrost and restructuring some of our supporting teams at People Can Fly."

It also seems that more projects could be negatively affected and he continues:

"This action became necessary as external market pressures persisted beyond our forecasts. The video game market is still evolving, and we have to adjust with where things are today. We are redoubling our efforts with new work-for-hire engagements and focusing on the development of a single independent game."

People Can Fly had a round of layoffs earlier this year after Take-Two pulled out of Project Dagger, which was subsequently confirmed to be closed. Now Project Victoria has also been canceled, while Project Bifrost continues in a limited capacity. However, the studio also has a project with Microsoft called Project Maverick, which fortunately does not seem to be affected by this bad news.

As usual, we are keeping our fingers crossed that everyone involved will manage as best they can despite this extremely unpleasant Christmas present.