Earlier this week, Ubisoft cancelled six games, delayed seven more, and closed three studios in Halifax, Canada and Stockholm, as part of efforts to “right-size” the ship under Commodore Tencent by chucking a lot of people and projects into the sea. I do not need to tell you that Beyond Good and Evil 2 was not one of the cancelled projects. Cats and dogs will be getting married before Ubisoft cancel Beyond Good and Evil 2 – a game announced 17 years ago, which has survived many rounds of key departures, scandals, tragedies and cost-cutting. Ubisoft’s latest public reasoning for not abandoning BG&E2 is that it’s an open world game, and their new corporate strategy is to focus on open world and live service games.
Ubisoft are restructuring around five mildly Shakespearean “Creative Houses”, according to a broad remit of “transforming Ubisoft’s operating model to produce exceptional quality games on the two core pillars of our strategy, Open World Adventures and GaaS-native experiences”, in the words of CEO Yves Guillemot.
The main “Creative House”, Vantage Studios, is “focused on scaling and extending Ubisoft’s largest and established franchises to turn them into annual billionaire brands” – specifically, Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Rainbow Six. The other four are dedicated to “competitive and cooperative shooter experiences”, “select, sharp Live experiences”, “casual and family-friendly games”, and “immersive fantasy worlds and narrative-driven universes”. BG&E is filed under the latter.
Speaking as somebody who loved the original Beyond Good & Evil – which I’ve previously mislabelled an open world game, despite it being more of an Ocarina of Time-style hubworld affair with peripheral dungeons – I’m happy in principle that Beyond Good & Evil will continue. But as ever, you do have to wonder why. The sequel has reportedly cost over half a billion dollars, making it one of the most expensive videogames ever developed, and I can’t imagine it recovering the cash. Anecdotally, the last proper trailer back in 2017 confused as many people as it enthralled.
Still, Ubisoft are plugging on with it. “As mentioned in yesterday’s press release, Beyond Good & Evil will be part of Creative House 4, dedicated to immersive fantasy worlds and narrative-driven universes,” a Ubisoft spokesperson told Kotaku in a statement, following this week’s bout of corporate surgery. “Beyond Good & Evil 2 remains a priority for us in the context of our strategy centered around Open World Adventures.”
I’m no Scientist of Money, but I feel like the real reason for Ubisoft not cancelling BG&E2 at this stage is a basic question of accounting. Right now they can report it to their investors as an asset, i.e. something that can bring in cash. If they cancel it, they’ll have to take a massive write-off. So it’s better to finish and release it, even if it doesn’t sell what they want it to sell.
Again speaking as somebody who isn’t a Scientist of Money, I reckon the obvious and cheapest way to boost the game’s chances is to stop calling it Beyond Good & Evil 2. Presenting something as a sequel naturally risks advertising only to those who played the first, and people have literally been born and had children since the first game came out in 2003. Even allowing for the release of a BG&E remaster, today’s young ‘uns likely know little of Jade and Uncle Pey’j. So I would just call it Beyond Good & Evil (202X). Or something more targeted, such as Cockney Cybermonkeys Online: An Open World Game From The Assassin’s Creed Folks.
