People Can Fly opens new UK, Poland studios

Polish developer People Can Fly has tripled in size over the past year thanks to the opening of two new studios.

An official blog post reveals the company has established a second studio in Poland and a its first overseas branch in UK city Newcastle. This brings People Can Fly's headcount up to over 150 staff.

The Newcastle studio actually opened in September 2017, and is manned by former Ubisoft staff as well as other "veteran developers" from other UK firms. While currently still small, People Can Fly hopes to grow its Newcastle team to as many as 30 people within the next 18 months.

Meanwhile, the recently opened PCF Rzeszów is home to a team of roughly 30 developers, all of whom previously worked on City Interactive's Sniper: Ghost Warrior franchise. These include people who were laid off during "significant downsizing" at CI earlier this year, with People Can Fly saying it was keen to "allow those great developers to keep on working together as a team."

Both new studios and the original team, best known for acclaimed shooter Bulletstorm, are currently working on a new IP: a AAA shooter developed with Square Enix.

"Since People Can Fly became an independent studio again, our ambition has been to build a team of talented and experienced developers that can develop the best AAA games," said CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski.

"Our intention is to give both new studios, in Newcastle and in Rzeszów, the opportunity to work on features or part of the game independently from the Warsaw team."