More than 18 years into its development, Beyond Good and Evil 2 has picked up a new writer at Ubisoft.
Rik Godwin, a lead writer and narrative director at the publisher, said on social media that he has been working on the game for the past two months. This was not a leak. Godwin said he checked before he posted, so Ubisoft seems happy to let one more vague confirmation of the game’s existence go public.
A small laugh is allowed.
Why a new hire means more than another promise
For years, Ubisoft has mentioned the sequel only in passing. In June, Ubisoft brand director Loïc Gounon said in an interview that the game is still in active development. You have probably heard that more than once already.
Godwin’s post stands out because it is about staffing. Ubisoft is still adding developers to the project, even though the development cycle seems to have no end and the company is in serious financial trouble.
The financial picture is hard to overlook
A few months ago, Ubisoft reported an operating loss of €1.3 billion ($1.48 billion) for the fiscal year that ended in March 2026. Its share price fell sharply after the company began a major restructuring in January, which split it into five creative houses, each focused on specific genres.
The same announcement canceled six games, including the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake. Ubisoft also cut 1,200 jobs during the previous fiscal year.
So the publisher dropped a remake of one of its most beloved games and kept this project going. Draw your own conclusions.
A timeline that almost dares you to believe it
Ubisoft first revealed Beyond Good and Evil 2 in May 2008 with a trailer showing the protagonist Jade and Pey’j, the pigman. A long silence followed.
Ubisoft and director Michel Ancel, who created Beyond Good and Evil and Rayman, gave conflicting accounts of whether the project was still moving forward. In 2016, Ancel confirmed it was on hold while his team made a new Rayman game.
On June 12, 2017, Ubisoft showed a major new trailer at E3 that focused heavily on interplanetary travel. Ancel left the studio in 2020. Since then, Ubisoft has said from time to time that development continues, without showing anything concrete.
In 2022, the game overtook Duke Nukem Forever as the AAA game with the longest development time ever. Nobody wants that record.
The industry’s strangest bet
Look at the rest of the industry right now. Former giants like Halo are being moved under new management because they underperformed. Studios are shrinking everywhere.
In that climate, a struggling publisher is still paying for an 18-plus-year development cycle for the sequel to a game that did not sell well the first time. It is the least sensible thing Ubisoft is doing, and somehow the most interesting.
Somewhere at Ubisoft, Godwin is two months into writing dialogue for Jade, a character players first met in a sequel trailer 18 years ago.