Beyond Good and Evil 2 development continues amidst Ubisoft cancellations

‘The team is hard at work to deliver on its ambitious promise.’

After Ubisoft canceled three unannounced projects last week alongside yet another delay for Skull and Bones, questions are inevitably being asked about the publisher’s other development-hell project: Beyond Good and Evil 2. The good news is that work on the game is still under way. The bad news is that its actual release date is just as unclear as ever. 

“Beyond Good and Evil 2’s development is under way and the team is hard at work to deliver on its ambitious promise,” a Ubisoft spokesperson tells Eurogamer. For those keeping track, that means it’s been almost fifteen years since Ubisoft released its first trailer for the game, which is longer than it took to get gaming’s other development-hell classic Duke Nukem Forever out the door. The original Beyond Good and Evil was released in 2003.

Still, confirming that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still in development doesn’t give us much of a clue about when Ubisoft might actually release it. The company made a big splash when it released a new trailer for the game at E3 2017, but at the time director Michel Ancel cautioned that the team was still at “day zero” of development. Following his departure from the company in 2020, reports emerged that Ancel was under investigation for his allegedly toxic management style.

Between last week’s news and the cancellations announced last year, Ubisoft has ended development on over half a dozen titles in the last twelve months. Skull and Bones, the multiplayer-focused pirate game that’s reportedly been in development since 2013, also saw its release date push back from March 2023.