This agreement pertains to Project Dagger, new action-adventure IP, that has been in development for the last 2 years – under the direction of People Can Fly’s team based in New York.
In addition to the standard provisions parties are to set out detailed terms of settlements differentiating the terms of settlements and the amount of advances received from the publisher for the game’s development to be repaid depending on the model in which the game will be commercialized, i.e., depending whether the game will be self-published or released with another publisher.
The Publisher has also not declared the intention to exercise its option to buy-out the intellectual property rights to the products produced under the agreement.
Consequently, People Can Fly has retained the intellectual property rights to the Project Dagger as the sole owner of these rights and is now determined to grow the project on its own.
“I assume we will part on good terms, and I don’t see reasons why we couldn’t work with Take-Two on some other project in the future. We strongly believe in the Project Dagger’s potential and are now committed to continue its development within our self-publishing pipeline. The game is still in pre-production – our team is now focusing on closing combat and game loops and migrate from UE4 to UE5. I’m conscious that this decision will add investments on us, but self-publishing is part of our strategy. Of course, we are not ruling out working with a new publisher if this creates a compelling business opportunity.” – says Sebastian Wojciechowski, CEO of People Can Fly.
Project Dagger is one of seven projects at People Can Fly currently in the works. There’s also Gemini – new project with Square Enix; Projects Bifrost and Victoria – both games to be released in the self-publishing model; and a project in the concept phase – Red; as well as two projects in VR technology – Green Hell VR and a new project based on one of the IPs from the Group’s portfolio.
People Can Fly upholds its recently updated strategy which is to let the Group release one game each year developed by the Group either in cooperation with a publisher or in the self-publishing model starting from 2024.