People Can Fly acquires Cooldown Games to establish dedicated publishing vertical
Outriders and Gears of War: Judgment developer People Can Fly has acquired Texas-based publisher Cooldown Games for an undisclosed fee.
Cooldown was established in 2024 by a group of former Gearbox Publishing veterans with the aim of bringing projects capable of accommodating busy players to market.
The two teams previously collaborated on Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, which sold over 1 million copies worldwide across PC and console platforms.
People Can Fly said the move will allow it to establish a dedicated publishing vertical to internalize its go-to-market strategy, distribution management, and commercial optimization—all while generating recurring revenue via third-party publishing agreements.
"This structure allows People Can Fly to leverage Cooldown's existing infrastructure, platform relationships, and commercial expertise to generate scalable publishing revenues," reads a press release.
"In addition to providing targeted support to internally developed titles, the publishing division will pursue third-party publishing agreements, creating incremental revenue streams."
Cooldown will operate as an independent publishing division within the People Can Fly Group. The company's existing leadership team will remain in place to lead the vertical.
"Although we are strongly focused on the work-for-hire segment to achieve positive cash flows across the Group, we have never intended to abandon our publishing plans. Rather, we have been waiting for the right moment for them to regain traction and scale," said People Can Fly Group CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski.
"While this is happening somewhat earlier than we originally anticipated, it is based on two key pillars: the trust in the Cooldown Games team built over the years, and an approach in which the publishing segment is intended to be revenue-generating from the outset, rather than cost-intensive."
People Can Fly is based in Poland but also has offices across the UK, United States, and Canada. It currently employs over 400 people and has provided work-for-hire services to notable companies such as Microsoft, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Krafton, and 2K Games.
In recent years, the company has made significant layoffs and cancelled multiple projects to cope with "external market pressures."
