LOST AND DAMNED
It’s always sad news when a game gets canceled, but some titles don’t even get that closure, remaining on development death row indefinitely. The term ‘development hell’ was coined long before the rise of the games industry, referring to media that ends up trapped in a state of limbo for any number of reasons, whether due to lack of funds, creative differences, legal disputes, or something else entirely.
The tech and gaming industry actually has its own term for projects like this; ‘vaporware’ refers to games and software (and sometimes hardware) that is officially announced but releases late or doesn’t release at all. Some games stagger through development hell only to be released in a lackluster final form, such as the infamous Duke Nukem Forever, which spent a whopping 15 years in development and went through multiple different game engines and development teams. Despite a decade and a half of hype, Forever tanked with terrible review scores and unimpressive sales figures, potentially killing the Duke Nukem IP forever (pun intended).
Another hotly-anticipated game that may never get released is Beyond Good and Evil 2, a prequel to the legendary 2003 action-adventure title. Although the original was considered a commercial failure, it reviewed well and gained enough of a cult following for Ubisoft to greenlight a second game from creator Michel Ancel (of Rayman fame). This was back in 2008, and fans heard nothing until a re-announcement at E3 in 2017, where Ancel confirmed that previous clips and screenshots were from a ditched version of the project.
In 2020, Ancel retired from game development, leaving many fans concerned about the fate of the game. Coincidentally, Ancel had also been working outside of Ubisoft on a survival game named Wild (announced in 2014) that had also been labeled as vaporware by some journalists.
Ancel was keen to stress that both games would remain in development without him, and BGaE2 was confirmed as ‘still in development’ by Ubisoft in 2021, but no release date nor new gameplay footage has surfaced yet.
One game that many are hoping will be released one day is Scalebound, which officially began development in 2013. A dragon-riding RPG from developer Platinum Games, it was canceled in May 2019 after a troubled development period, to the dismay of fans. Still, Microsoft remains the holder of the
Scalebound IP and Platinum’s head designer Hideki Kamiya confirmed in a recent interview that he was ‘totally serious’ about resurrecting the game should he get the chance.