Beyond Good & Evil 2 Is Still in Pre-Production 18 Years On
Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still in pre-production 18 years after it was first announced, according to a report published by Eurogamer on 21 October 2026. The report builds on a French-language article from Origami Media, which says the game has changed shape many times along the way.
Pre-production is the early stage of making a game, when the team is still deciding what the finished product will be. Origami Media reports that the project has not moved into full production. It says at least 250 people are working on it at Ubisoft Montpellier alone.
The design has shifted a great deal. According to Origami Media, the game was intended in 2019 to 2022 as a highly multiplayer, connected title, with several planets and players matchmade into groups. That plan narrowed over time. It moved from open-ended play to team play in groups of four, and then to pairs. The current direction is a solo-first, story-based game with optional co-op, meaning players can team up but do not need to.
Origami Media also reports that the project has repeatedly missed its creative checkpoints, known as "gates", because its design ideas kept changing. A gate is a milestone a team must pass before moving on to the next stage of work.
The long wait has also made history. PC Gamer reported in 2022 that Beyond Good & Evil 2 had passed Duke Nukem Forever as the longest-in-development video game. Duke Nukem Forever's development ran 5,156 days, a little over 14 years.
The game's history includes some changes at the top. Michel Ancel helped present the project at Ubisoft's E3 2017 conference, where it was introduced as a spiritual successor, or follow-up in spirit, to the original Beyond Good and Evil. In a 2020 Ubisoft update, Ubisoft said Ancel had decided to stop working in video games to focus on other personal projects, and that he was no longer part of the team.
Ubisoft has also been restructuring. Eurogamer's report notes the closure of RedLynx, the studio behind the Trials series, and a downsizing of the Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced team at Ubisoft Singapore.
Amid those changes, a GamingBolt report in January 2026 relayed a rumour that the game had escaped cancellation. The claim came from an unnamed speaker. In the same month, Ubisoft told Kotaku that it is still working on Beyond Good & Evil 2 and that the game remains a priority for the company.
For players, the picture is one of a long, reshaped project. The game has moved from a large multiplayer plan to a smaller story-driven one, and its team is still at the early stage of development that Origami Media describes.
