Newly free People Can Fly working on an AAA shooter
Polish-developer People Can Fly had already earned some acclaim for itself with Painkiller, but I think the Epic-co-developed Bulletstorm is what really did it. It was ahead of the resurgence of wild, violent first-person shooters and shortly after Epic acquired the independent developer and set it to work on Gears of War: Judgment.
But Microsoft bought the Gears rights from Epic shortly after Judgment and People Can Fly — as Epic Games Poland — went from Gears to helping as co-developer on Fortnite. It regained its Independence from Epic in June of 2015.
“The desire to create our own game was stronger than all the benefits of being a part of Epic group,” CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski told Destructoid a year ago. “And, we are lucky that Tim Sweeney as well as Epic’s board and its executive team members are fair and honest people and allowed us to reach for our dreams and gave us amazing opportunity to become an independent developer again.”
Speaking to Gamepressure, the newly independent studio is indeed working on an AAA shooter, which entered development at the beginning of 2016. Wojciechowski said a publisher is already attached, but the game won’t be revealed until “next year.” The studio is also working on a second, smaller project in tandem.
Bulletstorm (blame the EA contract for GFWL PC woes, by the by) set itself up for a sequel that never came and People Can Fly maintains the rights to it, so I’d still count that as a chance for the studio to, “create our own game,” over working on other peoples’ projects. Of course I’d take some new, crazy shooter I can’t even imagine yet as well.
People Can Fly is working on two projects. CEO: “We’re ready to show what we’re capable of” [Gamepressure]
