Outriders Dev’s Next Game Has Been Canceled After Publishing Agreement With Take-Two Fell Through

Outriders developer People Can Fly’s next game has been canceled after its publishing agreement with Take-Two Interactive fell through.

In its recent report, Outriders developer People Can Fly has announced that it has decided to discontinue further work on its next game, tentatively titled Project Dagger, nearly 2 years after its publishing agreement with Take-Two came to an end.

According to the studio, the discontinuation of work on the Project is the result of re-analysis of the development plans for projects implemented by the capital group of PCF Group S.A. and introducing changes to these plans in connection with the unsatisfactory results of the evaluation of the scope and commercial potential of the project after redefining the direction of the game’s development, which the company informed about in a previous report.

It is further mentioned that the decision to discontinue further work results in the creation of write-offs as of 31 December, 2023, in the amount of 100% of the value of expenditure incurred on the project and the write-off of the value of expenditure incurred on the Project from the Company’s accounting books on the date of the decision to discontinue the Project. This amounts to losses of around 16.9 to 19.8 million US Dollars.

Back in September, 2022, People Can Fly had announced that it had received a letter from Take-Two Interactive informing about its intention to terminate the production and publishing agreement concerning the action-adventure title, Project Dagger. Up until then, work on the title had been ongoing for 2 years.

At the time, People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski had mentioned that the studio strongly believed in Project Dagger and wanted to continue working on it as part of its self-publishing activities. He had mentioned that the game had been in pre-production, and that the development team was focused on refining the combat and gameplay systems and migrating from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5. However, it turns out that the project lacked vision, owing to the redefined direction during later stages of development.