Take-Two pulls out of ‘Outriders’ developer’s next game, 2 years into development

GTA and Borderlands publisher Take-Two Interactive has terminated its development and publishing agreement for People Can Fly’s next title, two years into the game’s development.

• READ MORE: ‘Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’ beta preview: generation thrill
  

People Can Fly, the developer behind the 2021 co-op RPG shooter Outriders, revealed in a financial update that Take-Two has terminated its agreement to publish its upcoming action-adventure title, codenamed Project Dagger.

According to the developer, Take-Two has “not declared the intention to exercise its option to buy-out the intellectual property rights to the products produced under the agreement,” meaning that People Can Fly retains the IP rights on Project Dagger.

The developer has also stated that it is “now determined to grow the project on its own,” and People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski didn’t rule out working with Take-Two again in the future.

“We strongly believe in Project Dagger’s potential and are now committed to continue its development within our self-publishing pipeline,” said Wojciechowski. “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.”

Project Dagger is one of seven games currently in development across People Can Fly’s nine studios, which also includes a project being worked on in collaboration with Square Enix called Gemini, a concept project codenamed Red as well as two VR projects called Bifrost and Victoria that the developer plans to self-publish.

People Can Fly is perhaps best known as the developer behind Outriders, a game that received something of a mixed critical reception – although publisher Square Enix noted that it saw a successful launch thanks to Xbox Game Pass.

Elsewhere in gaming, HBO has released the first trailer for The Last Of Us starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.