‘Beyond Good & Evil 2’ Reportedly Survives Ubisoft Restructuring, Enters Record-Breaking Year 18 Of Development
Though Ubisoft’s massive corporate revamp has seen them give the axe to a number of upcoming titles, the long-awaited Beyond Good & Evil 2 has reportedly survived the culling – and in doing so, successfully entered its eighteenth year of development.
As part of their recently announced “quality”-focused “reset”, the France-based company “discontinued 6 games that do not meet the new enhanced-quality as well as more selective portfolio prioritization criteria”, including the beleaguered Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake, three new IPs, and a mobile title.
And though Ubisoft did confirm that the general Beyond Good & Evil IP would be handled by one of their new subsidiary studios, Insider Gaming editor-in-chief Tom Henderson has offered the first direct word that the sequel, in defying all expectations, lives on.
According to his sources, Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still under active development, with multiple “pushbacks” resulting in its exceedingly long development time, all of which is currently on track to cost Ubisoft over $500 million when all is said and done.
As noted by Henderson, with the sequel being formally announced on May 30th 2008, its survival adds yet another mark to its record-breaking 17-and-a-half year dev time, beating out both Duke Nukem Forever‘s Guinness recognized 14 years and Metroid Dread‘s yet-to-be-certified 16 years.
What makes BG&E2‘s persistence particularly baffling is the fact that its overall development has been rough, to say the least.
After debuting its premiere trailer in 2017, the next year saw Ubisoft ask fans to contribute art and music to the game pro bono, which drew them immense backlash for essentially begging for free work.
In September 2020, Beyond Good and Evil creator Michel Ancel quit the games industry in September 2020, with a subsequent report bringing to light his disorganized and apparently abusive leadership – and though Ubisoft would insist that development was going well, Ancel would later claim that, at least during his time, the game suffered from “too many problems between managers“.
Reported as still being in “early development” as of November 2022, leaked information provided by playtesters indicated that the game had undergone an internal reboot at some point following the reveal of its 2018 pre-alpha walkthrough.
February 2023 would see the abrupt exit of BG&E2 managing director Guillaume Carmona, followed by the death of Creative Director Emile Morel that July.
At present, it remains unclear as to just why Ubisoft have dragged their feet on Jade’s return, nor why they continue to throw money at it absent any real significant progress.
In terms of the latter, Reddit user /u/33sharpies offers a particularly interesting theory, his speculation suggesting that the game is simply put, “too big to fail”.
“[Cancelling it] now will negatively impact the valuation of Ubisoft as a whole and their stock price,” they wrote. “So they just continue developing it further delaying the hit. For every fiscal year until they cancel or release it, they get to keep playing pretend in La La Land like they’re still in the green until they can get the company into a stronger position to take the hit or attempt to make something back off the investment.”
Admittedly, one struggles to imagine how Ubisoft can even begin to dig themselves out of this hole of their own making, to say nothing of just how much of a success BG&E2 would have to be to make a dent in those losses.
But one day, the case will have to be made – even if the game ultimately never actually releases.
