Bulletstorm developers go independent
In 2013 Bulletstorm developers, People Can Fly were bought by Epic Games and redubbed Epic Games: Poland. While it was dubbed this it created Gears of War: Judgement. Today marks the studio regaining its independence from the creator’s of the Unreal games and engines. They will continue to work on projects with Epic Games, such as Fortnite and another, yet to be announced, game using the Unreal 4 engine.
However the newly independent studio will be without Patrick Chmielarz, it’s founder. He has since departed to form another studio The Astronauts, which created The Vanishing of Ethan Carter in 2014. He had this to say about the new studio and the rumours of a potential Bulletstorm sequel.
Bulletstorm 2 script and design exist but it's not something a small indie studio could ever make. Or should. Market killed games like that.
— Adrian Chmielarz (@adrianchm) June 24, 2015
TBC I got nothing to with the reborn People Can Fly. They own Bulletstorm IP but no idea if they're up for a sequel. https://t.co/0hUgAYEWsF
— Adrian Chmielarz (@adrianchm) June 24, 2015
The departure of People Can Fly comes at a very unusual time, given that Epic Games has just begun to ship the brand new Unreal 4 engine to developers, with the only existing title currently available for major release being the current flavour-of-the-month survival sim, ARK Survival Evolved. The game is currently in an early access state and, despite some optimisation issues, is shaping up to be a decent contender for the genre as a whole. It is possible that Epic are trying to dump assets, however that is only a guess due to the timing of this particular event.