Ex-People Can Fly devs start The Astronauts

Three devs from Bulletstorm dev People Can Fly have branched out to form a new development house called The Astronauts. They have also licensed Unreal Engine 3 tech for their future games.

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Three developers from Bulletstorm's People Can Fly have flown the coop to start a new company called The Astronauts. As part of the announcement, the group has licensed Unreal Engine 3 from Epic Games for their future projects.

Epic bought the studio in mid-August. The trio, who have worked on such games as Bulletstorm, Painkiller, and most recently Gears of War: Judgment, said the goal of the studio is to put a Neil Armstrong-sized footprint on the gaming scene.

In licensing the Unreal Engine 3, which the team has already worked with for six years, they joked: "We thought about making our own engine for our projects. That lasted about ten seconds, nine of which were filled with laughter."

Contributing Editor
From The Chatty
  • reply
    October 11, 2012 4:30 PM

    John Keefer posted a new article, Ex-People Can Fly devs start The Astronauts.

    Three devs from Bulletstorm dev People Can Fly have branched out to form a new development house called The Astronauts. They have also licensed Unreal Engine 3 tech for their future games.

    • reply
      October 11, 2012 4:32 PM

      noice

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      October 11, 2012 4:33 PM

      kickstarter in 3..2..

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      October 11, 2012 4:35 PM

      That's it, really? No link to source? No press release? No mention of who the three people?

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      October 11, 2012 4:58 PM

      How do you even license UDK anymore- anyone can make a game and they get a cut. It's not like you have to have meetings with Epic and get lawyers involved.

      Should really be reported that they are using UE3 for their next game.

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      October 11, 2012 5:41 PM

      wait so they started a band?

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      October 11, 2012 5:52 PM

      There's been a bit of an exodus from Epic in terms of higher-level creative and technical talent:

      - Lee Perry, once the Gears of War 3 gameplay designer, and the lead on Fortnite when it was announced in December, left in July 2012 to start BitMonster.

      - Rod Fergusson, director of production on the Gears franchise, left in August 2012 and joined Irrational Games to work on Bioshock Infinite.

      - Most recently before this announcement, Cliff Bleszinski announced his departure in early October, weeks after participating in a Reddit iAmA thread.

      I'm a bit disturbed that the most prominent producer still at Epic that I can recall is Tanya Jessen, most famous for her "You scared the dick off me!" commentary on Bulletstorm's PR ramp-up. And it's really obvious that Mark Rein and Michael Capps are running the show, pushing hard on established franchises (Gears, Infinity Blade) or established trends (iOS games, MOBA / Minecraft). Hopefully they have an upcoming announcement of something with a change of creative direction, because they seem stuck in a creative rut, even if it's wildly successful from a financial perspective.

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      October 12, 2012 6:01 AM

      No surprise. They got shitted on by Epic.

      They left, licensed the engine and got back to work to do what they wanted to do from the get go. They gave the whole "lets-be-under-a-conglomerate" thing a try and it sucked giant Bruma nuts.
      So basically they are back to square one, older and wiser.

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        October 12, 2012 11:36 AM

        You must have been playing with a nudity mod, personally I don't remember anything unusual about the mens testicles in Bruma.

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