Frostpunk 2 Developer Canceled a Project & Laid Off Employees

Warsaw-based 11 bit studios, the developer behind the acclaimed Frostpunk 2, which took the trophy of Best Sim/Strategy Game at this year’s The Game Awards, has decided to cancel a project, internally referred to as Project 8, and it resulted in layoffs. 

Przemysław Marszał, President of the Management Board of 11 Bit Studios, has covered the situation in a public statement issued last week:

The project started in early 2018, and the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic made the development difficult. The team struggled to make progress while trying to stabilize the development. Marszał admitted that “while we achieved noticeable quality improvements in certain areas, several critical aspects of the game and its development process remained problematic despite multiple iterations. Over time, delays accumulated, and with each milestone, the project’s budget grew.” According to what he had shared, until September this year, the development cost of Project 8 had reached over PLN 48.4 million (estimated $11.9 million based on today’s exchange rate). 

Six years passed, and there came a tipping point, a sad one. The internal reviews, independent surveys, market analyses, and the game’s sales forecasts that the studio organized led to “significant doubts about the project’s overall profitability” and the final decision from the Management Board to cancel it. 

It has not yet been revealed how many people are affected by this action. The President said that over half of the 37 employees who were working on the project by the end of this September were offered chances to move to other internal projects in development or unannounced titles; but he didn't mention what has happened to the other half. 

One of the projects that the studio is working on is The Alters, a sci-fi survival adventure game that features over ten thousand lines of fully voice-acted and animated dialogues. The story of the game revolves around a man who crash-lands on a remote planet. The Alters will be released on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series in early next year.