One Ubisoft game has miraculously survived cancellation says source

In the wake of Ubisoft’s restructuring efforts, one game appears to have avoided cancellation while a workers union calls for a strike.

In case you missed it, Ubisoft has announced it is undergoing a major restructuring, which has not only resulted in seven of its games being delayed but another six being cancelled altogether.

The identities of most of those cancelled games are unknown, with the exception of the much troubled remake of Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, which was rumoured to launch early this year.

And yet one game has reportedly managed to avoid cancellation, although since it’s been in a permeant state of delay since it was first announced, Beyond Good & Evil 2 still seems no closer to release.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be too surprising as Ubisoft said all the cancelled projects (bar Prince Of Persia) hadn’t been formally announced yet. Beyond Good & Evil 2 was technically announced all the way back in 2008 though it wasn’t properly shown off until 2017.

By 2022, it became the most delayed video game of all time, breaking Duke Nukem Forever’s record of 14 years – and yet it still seems no closer to being finished.

Given the scale of Ubisoft’s restructuring, which paints a bleak picture of the company in general, does this mean work on Beyond Good & Evil 2 is progressing well? Unfortunately, there’s no real way to tell.

According to an Insider Gaming report, by the usually reliable Tom Henderson, all that’s known is that Beyond Good & Evil 2 remains in active development.

Apparently, it’s incredibly lengthy development time has set Ubisoft back over $500 million (about £372 million), so either the company has a lot of faith in the project or it’s perpetuating the sunk cost fallacy.

Last November, Henderson claimed the Prince Of Persia remake would launch in January but in the wake of its cancellation, he’s said on X that Ubisoft initially pushed it back to March, before cancelling it entirely.

The restructuring is expected to lead to further lay-offs, beyond the studio closures, especially since Ubisoft is ending its work from home policy and mandating that employees return to office work five days a week.

Ubisoft said this will be ‘complemented by an annual allowance of working from home days,’ with senior vice president of studio operations Marie-Sophie de Waubert insisting to GamesIndustry.biz that it’s ‘still a hybrid model, but spread differently.’

Companies often strip back remote working as a means of gently encouraging employees to resign, since being laid off means an expensive severance package (at least in Europe).

Ubisoft tried this before, just a few months ago, at The Division developer Massive Entertainment with what it called a voluntary career transition programme, ‘giving eligible team members the opportunity to take their next career step on their own terms, supported by a comprehensive package that includes financial and career assistance.’

According to IGN, it wasn’t especially effective, which led to Ubisoft just letting go approximately 55 employees from the studio anyway.

Elsewhere, game workers union Solidaires Informatique called for a half-day strike to take place today at Ubisoft Paris in response to ‘the disastrous announcements made by [Ubisoft CEO] Mr. Yves Guillemot.

‘It is out of the question to let a boss run wild and destroy our working conditions. Perhaps we need to remind him that it is his employees who make the games,’ reads a BlueSky post.

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