"The entire games industry is going through a severe crisis": 11 bit studios on P8 cancellation and its publishing portfolio
11 bit studios CEO Przemysław Marszał has opened up about the shutdown of Project 8. He also outlined the company’s plans for the coming years and changes to its publishing strategy.
Frostpunk 2
In an interview with PAP Biznes, Marszał acknowledged that 2024 has been “in some areas” a difficult year for 11 bit studios.
Despite record-breaking financial results due to the commercial success of Frostpunk 2, the company saw its share price plunge. Earlier this month, it canceled Project 8, an unannounced narrative-driven game, wrote off nearly $12 million spent on its development, and laid off 18 employees (as Marszał told PAB Biznes).
“We postponed the premiere of The Alters by a few months,” he continued. “Some of the projects from the publishing house are still unprofitable. Additionally, the entire games industry is going through a severe crisis.”
However, he assured that 11 bit studios knows what to do next to improve its position in the market. “We have a good financial situation as a company, we have good cash flow, and we don’t need additional cash,” Marszał said.
Speaking of the Project 8 shutdown, he cited Senua’s Saga as one of its reference points, but with more focus on gameplay (similar to A Plague Tale). The company faced several challenges during the development, including the need to further increase its budget.
11 bit studios also realized that the market environment has changed since the beginning of the production on P8. Games like Hellblade and A Plague Tale are currently struggling to succeed commercially.
“We noticed that P8 has great risks for us in terms of bringing profits to the company,” Marszał explained. “This project has been dragging on for years and we had bigger and smaller problems with the development itself — it was a very ambitious third-person game with extensive action elements, based on a strong but difficult theme.”
Resolving the critical issues would have required additional quarters of work, so 11 bit decided to cancel the project and write off the associated costs.
According to Marszał, the company has recently started working on two new unannounced games:
- A small-budget project requiring a team of 25 developers, with launch expected in 2027;
- A “bigger” project that “could take about four years to produce” (similar in scale to The Alters).
11 bit studios also plans to present its new publishing strategy at the annual investor conference. “There will be some changes related to our perspective on the publishing segment, which will be a direct consequence of the experience we have gathered related to this segment,” Marszał noted.
Although Indika and The Invincible have already turned a profit, games like Creatures of Ava and The Thaumaturge have yet to recoup their investment. So 11 bit studios needs to change its approach in this area.
The company’s publishing pipeline currently includes Moonlighter 2, a sequel to its “biggest publishing hit.” It is now also negotiating more deals with third-party devs.
