Special survival game of Ubisoft to PlayStation Wild was announced in 2014 with great excitement. However, the chaos in the cancellation and management processes of the project led to the harsh criticism of former Ubisoft designer Michel Ancel. Ancel described this situation as a “real scandal” by the Ubisoft Paris team of the game.
Ubisoft’s Canceled Game Wild’s Tale
Wild was developed by an independent developer Wild Sheep Studio, which was newly created by Sony Interactive Entertainment support as a special project for PS4. The game, which has a promising version until 2018, experienced time loss during the efforts to upgrade to PS5. The management changes on Sony led the project to stop. In this process, Ubisoft was found in the bid to inherit the game and despite Sony’s budget boost offer, this offer was rejected due to existing contracts with Ubisoft.
Ancel claims that Ubisoft delivered the project to the chaotic Paris editorial team after taking the game and brought the final of this situation. It also states that from Ubisoft managers of the era Tommy François grow problems with taking the project. François then separated from the company due to sexual harassments.
Ancel expressed that in the interview with Superpouvoir, Ubisoft Paris team literally crushed the project: We had a playable version at
2018, but after taking Ubisoft, the project was destroyed by a team. Even those people did not play the game. Wild has been cancelled with the original vision, after being wandered into unnecessary places for two years. This is literally a scandal.”
Michel Ancel explained that the challenges both Wild and Beyond Good & Evil live in 2 projects cause separation from the industry in 2020. Ancel said that at the end of 2019, she had experienced a serious exhaustion, said, “Aile life was very impressed by this situation, and I had no power to continue the game sector due to my wrong management of energy.”
Ancel added that they have created playable demo videos for both projects in 2018 and they will be happy to share these videos.
Wild’s cancellation continues to be understood as an example of administrative failures in the gaming industry. Although the project has recently found out of meeting the expectations of players, Michel Ancel managed to leave the game world with other studies in the industry.
