There’s some strange rumors about the current state of Beyond Good & Evil 2.
We won’t recap the whole story of this game here, but just to set the stage on what we have seen so far, developer Michael Ancel has been talking about the game since 2007, Ubisoft formally announced announced the title in 2016, and Ancel left the company in 2020. At this point the game is being developed by Ubisoft Montpelier, headed by Guillaume Carmona.
On Twitter, Tom Henderson answered fellow journalist Paul Tassi’s question on the state of the game:
“It does but it’s very complicated.”
DerpyBox on the Gaming Rumors and Leaks subreddit shares more detailed rumors on the title, from a French language YouTuber named Gautoz News Show. We’ll summarize below.
Guillaume Carmona left Ubisoft in February 2023, at the start of new labor investigations at Montpelier. Gautoz claims that Carmona is also guilty of misconduct, but Ubisoft protected him by letting him leave to escape investigation. Incredibly, the investigators did choose not to go after the people who left Ubisoft, and that has led to the staff feeling betrayed and dejected.
Obviously, the mood in the Montpelier studio is really bad, but the picture Gautoz paints is incredible. They claim one person left the project every ten days in 2022, for about a year! But the real issue that’s been holding it back is that Ubisoft directors have been reviewing the studio’s pitch for the project year after year, and have rejected it each time.
If they had gotten the go signal already, that would have led to hiring more staff. At this point, a lot of the original developers have left the project and Ubisoft is currently in a hiring freeze.
And unfortunately for this staff, Ubisoft has motivation not to cancel the project either. As you may have read from prior reports, Ubisoft’s owners, the Guillemot family, want to set up an OPA, AKA a public offer of acquisition, AKA they’re looking for someone to buy the company from them. They had an OPA in the works with Bolloré when they announced the project, and they’re still hoping to find someone to buy the company now.
So, Beyond Good & Evil 2 is a vanity project of sorts for Ubisoft. It’s part of the package they hope to sell to any potential investors who will buy the company from them. If they cancel the game now, it will make them look less attractive to investors, and yes, this is apparently the same logic behind Ubisoft releasing Skull & Bones.
So Ubisoft is caught between a rock and a hard place right now. If these reports are true, we probably shouldn’t even worry if this game could possibly be good if it gets made. It’s clear that it will be a disaster, and our concern should really be more for the employees at Ubisoft Montpelier who had to, and are working in, such a toxic work environment. Prospects for this project will only look up when the company goes through some real changes, starting at the top.
