The Polish development studio has bought itself out of Epic Games and are now an independent studio once again. They were actually temporarily known as Epic Games Poland, but you likely know them best as People Can Fly, and that’s the name they’re going back to.
They’ve been a part of Epic since 2007 when Epic purchased a majority stake in the company, and they’ve worked on a variety of things while under the Epic umbrella such as Gears of War: Judgement, Bulletstorm, Fortnite, Infinity Blade III and more. Here’s what they had to say in a recent blog post after the announcement was made.
The desire to create our own game, to dive into the game development process that starts in your head, through concepts and design ideas, realized in prototypes and finally in the game, to inspire each other every minute, to create and iterate, was stronger than all the benefits of being a part of Epic group. 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. Moreover, in parallel to working on our new game, we continue to partner with Epic and use UE4 so we couldn’t be happier! For those who may have forgotten about us – we were the team behind Painkiller, Gears of War and Bulletstorm. Our DNA is AAA shooters and we’ve just started a journey to bring you our new game. So please stay tuned!
That last bit about still being partnered with Epic is interesting. I wonder if their new game is still something they have a partnership with Epic on beyond just using Unreal Engine 4, or if it’s just for engine use. Regardless, they sound like a passionate bunch that are happy to be on their own, and it sounds like Epic was willing to let them go without putting up a fight, so cheers all around.
Source: People Can Fly via Gamasutra
