It appears that another well-known development studio has been hit by layoffs today, and it's Polish developer People Can Fly.
The studio, known for games like the recent Bulletstorm VR and Outriders, reportedly laid off over 30 employees according to a report by Kotaku.
Apparently, they were working on a game for Square Enix code-named Project Gemini. 20 more employees were also removed from the project but not laid off. They have been shifted to other projects within the company.
The report mentions that the layoffs were motivated by budget limitations and shrinking scope for the game, which wouldn't be surprising considering that Square Enix is in or approaching a phase of refocusing its resources.
TechRaptor reached out to People Can Fly to ask for a confirmation of the report, and we heard that the developer has nothing to add, but confirmed that it's an unfortunate situation and the company is "doing its best to adequately support these laid off employees."
According to the company's official website, People Can Fly is currently working on over 8 different projects.
This is only the latest among many studios to be hit by layoffs or even full shutdowns during the past year. We saw both large and small companies being affected to various extents including Sony, Bungie, Epic Games, Tencent, Microsoft, Amazon, Frontier, Team17, on top of many of Embracer's studios.
The latest large announcement of personnel reduction came just a couple of days ago from League of Legends and Valorant developer Riot Games, which laid off approximately 530 employees in order to refocus its development efforts, resulting in the upcoming shutdown of the Riot Forge brand.
2023 has been a devastating year for employment in the gaming industry due to evaporating investment and many companies having overextended during the pandemic. Unfortunately, the layoffs appear not to have ended with the end of last year, and ar continuing into 2024.
