‘Outriders’ studio People Can Fly cancels co-op action RPG ‘Project Dagger’

People Can Fly has confirmed the cancellation of its co-op action role-playing game Project Dagger.

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The Outriders developers began work on the new action IP Project Dagger back in 2020 alongside Take-Two Interactive, but the publisher pulled out of the partnership in 2022. 

Following the split, People Can Fly retained the rights to the project and confirmed they were “now determined to grow the project on its own”.

“We strongly believe in Project Dagger’s potential and are now committed to continue its development within our self-publishing pipeline,” said People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski at the time. “The game is still in pre-production – our team is now focusing on closing combat and game loops and migrating from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5.”

However, it’s now been confirmed that work on Project Dagger stopped earlier this month.

“The discontinuation of work on the project is the result of re-analysis of the development plans,” said a letter to investors, with the scope and commercial potential of the project deemed “unsatisfactory”.

People Can Fly have decided to discontinue further work on Project Dagger, a new action-adventure IP that has been in development for a multiple years.

The game was to be published by Take-Two but that agreement was ended in September 2022.

PCF expects impairments of ~$17-20m. pic.twitter.com/FpPd70GB1t

— MauroNL (@MauroNL3) April 25, 2024

According to VGC, over 50 people were working on the project at People Can Fly’s New York studio. Project Dagger had been targeting a 2025 release date, and was set to launch a new franchise of games.

The cancellation comes after People Can Fly reportedly laid off 30 developers earlier this year, who had been working on an unannounced game with Square Enix.

Earlier this week, indie studio Flaming Fowl announced their new title Ironmarked via a free demo, but also confirmed development had stopped on the project in the same update due to the “lack of funding” in the game industry.

“We also hope that by releasing this demo, we can help those people leaving us to secure new roles elsewhere, by demonstrating their outstanding work on the project,” the studio wrote.

“Hopefully, with enough wishlists on Steam, we will be able to find funding in the future for Ironmarked, but until then we will be working on a smaller game that we can fully fund ourselves.”

In other news, Battlestate Games has angered the Escape From Tarkov playerbase with the recently released Unheard edition of the game, which costs £215 (€250) and includes several pay-to-win perks.