People Can Fly Removes 30 Developers from Unannounced Square Enix Game ‘Project Gemini’ to Shrink Scope

It's not even the end of January yet and the games industry has already announced layoffs for several thousand employees, showing that 2024 could be even more problematic than the already troublesome 2023 in this regard. We reached out to MIDiA Research Senior Analyst and Strategy Director Karol Severin to discuss the state of the games industry in this post-pandemic, high-inflation environment.

A recent update to Microsoft's website suggests that Square-Enix's upcoming Visions of Mana may be headed to Xbox Game Pass alongside its release. Square-Enix first announced the newest entry in the long-running RPG franchise during the 2023 Game Awards, surprising fans with the reveal of the newest Mana game. The RPG is set to arrive as the first brand-new main-series entry in the franchise in nearly two decades, with Mana's recent releases coming as remakes of older titles. Now, the newest Square-Enix game may be coming to Game Pass as well.

Square Enix has revealed that several people have been criminally charged for distributing counterfeit merchandise in China.

Apple has finally decided to allow game streaming services on iOS. The news came yesterday with a press release where Apple highlighted that the change came about due to developers' feedback.

Fortnite is coming back to iOS this year, at least in Europe, Epic Games announced today. It will do so by taking advantage of the Digital Markets Act law passed by the European Union, which will let the Epic Games Store on iOS.

Polish developer People Can Fly, which is arguably best known for making the third-person co-op shooter Outridersand first-person-shooter Bulletstorm, has confirmed that it’s laid off a number of its staff. A spokesperson described the situation as “unfortunate.”

Room for another mass layoff post, before we end the day? This one is actually two separate stories but in a bid to conserve resources and make our frontpage slightly less depressing to read, I am going to roll them together. Black Forest Games, the Embracer-owned creators of the Destroy All Humans! Remake, are reportedly cutting 50% of their workforce - around 50-60 people. Outriders developers People Can Fly, meanwhile, have laid off 30 developers who were working on an unannounced Square Enix game.

People Can Fly, the developer behind 2021's surprise shooter hit Outriders, has laid off more than 30 employees. This news comes by way of Kotaku, which reports that its source with knowledge of the situation said the job cuts affected only staff working on an unannounced game at the studio, codenamed Project Gemini, that is to be published by Square Enix. 

People Can Fly has laid off 30 employees, and reallocated 20 others, from Project Gemini.

Outriders and Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly has joined the long list of developers and companies in the games industry that have been hit with layoffs, less than a month into 2024. As per a report by Kotaku, the studio has laid off over 30 people.

Here's your daily Palworld sales update: the open world survival crafting game with monster collection mechanics has now surpassed eight million units sold on Steam alone in less than a week from the early access launch. It also broke the two million concurrent players milestone on Valve's platform, a feat that was only ever managed by PUBG: Battlegrounds back when the Battle Royale game was at its height. There's still over a million difference between the two, but it would not be wise to discount Palworld at this point.

Polish developer People Can Fly is laying off more than 30 members of staff.