Take off now, ride!
Two years into the creation of People Can Fly’s upcoming game, GTA publisher Take-Two Interactive has withdrawn from a publishing agreement.
A letter of intent to terminate the development and publishing agreement by mutual understanding was received from Take-Two Interactive, according to a statement released by the Outriders developer.
A yet-unannounced “action-adventure” game based on an original IP was planned for release by Take-Two. The game, Project Dagger, is still in the pre-production phase. According to People Can Fly, it will now concentrate on tightening up its gameplay loops and combat, as well as switching from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5.
More wailing during the live service?
The statement presents the choice as having been made amicably but doesn’t specify why Take-Two terminated the publishing contract. Sebastian Wojciechowski, CEO of People Can Fly, stated that there is no reason why the studio won’t collaborate with Take-Two in the future.
The project’s rights have been retained by People Can Fly, who will continue working on it before independently publishing the finished product. Take-Two had the option of purchasing the property rights, but chose not to do so, the statement claims. The publisher’s walkout is portrayed by Wojciechowski as merely a blip on the way to the project’s full completion.
One of the seven games being worked on at People Can Fly right now is called Project Dagger. In addition, the studio is working on a game in collaboration with Square Enix, two other projects that will be self-published, and a few VR games.
In order to release the live service FPS Outriders in 2020, it most recently collaborated with Square Enix. We considered it to be a “peculiar game” with boring cover shooting and a bad first impression. But if you invest enough time in it, you’ll discover that “Outriders’ take on the looter shooter genre has an undeniable charm.”
Outriders wasn’t well received by critics, but it wasn’t as poorly received as Square Enix’s most recent attempt at live service games, which ended up being a complete failure.