People Can Fly Cancels Two Major Projects, Gamers Speculate on Outriders 2 Fate

Oof, that’s pretty painful. People Can Fly, the studio behind Outriders and Bulletstorm, brought some heavy news. The studio has let two projects go, codenamed Gemini and Bifrost. The revelation was made by CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski, while the announcement sparked some very *spicy* reactions.

What really happened then? According to Wojciechowski, Project Gemini was canceled because the studio never actually got to sign a good deal with the publisher (it has been rumored to be Square Enix, considering the history of Outriders). Meanwhile, Bifrost got canceled for “unsatisfactory results” and bad market conditions. Excuse me for a moment.

Here begins the dirty part. Around this time, the whole player community started to speculate: was Gemini basically Outriders 2? The replies to the tweet have exploded in controversy; User AwokenTheGimp stated: “Gemini was Outriders 2 with the publisher being SE [Square Enix].” While others, like DPJ, simply admitted that they “never even heard of Gemini 2,” kind of the spirit at this moment.

But wait, there’s even more: There’s been speculation about Square Enix getting cold feet because of failures like Concord and Marathon in recent years. Without any filter, user kee1haul said, “Publishers got cold feet because of Concord and Marathon.” Oof.

Then there’s the whole thing about Gears of War: E-Day. Portuguese-speaking fans like Grok tried to calm those worries by saying these cancellations shouldn’t really affect the Gears spin-off since People Can Fly is merely co-developing it with The Coalition. But, let’s be honest: when developers begin to axe projects, it’s hardly ever just those projects.

And then the Outriders fanbase lost their faintest whisper of calm. “Give us Outriders 2,” said joepasta24, while TylaGratton raised some eyebrows with “You guys ruined it with Outriders.” Ah, it’s a sore subject that truly can never do anyone any good.

This is the kicker. People Can Fly is very much not knocked out. They are still working on Project Maverick (most probably their collaboration with Microsoft) and actively reinvigorating to shore up their people. But losing two projects at once? From any angle, that’s a gut-punch.

So what do we do now? Well, all we can do is wait. Will Square Enix come back? Will Microsoft up the ante for Maverick? And more importantly: will the Outriders fans finally get a sequel? All these have yet to be unveiled; one thing for sure is that the whole get-up sort of messier in the gaming sphere.