Games that went "Missing in Action!"

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Developing games is extremely complex, as we now know. This is often emphasised by both the ordinary employees at a given studio and the greedy executives at the top of the pyramid, who know exactly how many employees are needed to complete even small game projects and how much budgets have increased in just 10 years.

So it is even more surprising that games can end up in so-called "development hell", that they can either be teased by the studios behind them, only to disappear for many, many years at a time without any real signs of life from the production. Who pays the salaries? What do the daily production meetings look like on game projects that have been going on for 6 years? 7 years? 10 years? "So, how far along are we with features X and Y?"

It's hard to imagine, isn't it? But it actually happens. It happens that games that have taken just that long to complete suddenly emerge from obscurity, and it becomes clear that a significant team has been working on them for what feels like a generation.

Those are the ones we're going to look at today. We're going to outline how long some of the projects that are currently in some shade of what the internet has dubbed "development hell" (although that can be misleading) have been in development, as well as how likely it is that they will ever be released.

PlayDead's next game - In development for approximately nine years (we assume)

Danish PlayDead released Inside in 2016, and although it is nearly impossible to speculate, we assume that the studio, to some extent, had an idea of what they wanted to do next immediately after. Of course, they have continuously brought the game to new platforms, such as PlayStation in the months that followed, an iOS port in 2017, and a Switch port in 2018, but we still assume that work on the studio's third game has been underway immediately since its launch in 2016. That gives us a development time, so far, of about nine years. And that's without the game having a name, PlayDead mentioning it directly, or us having any indication of when the studio will be finished.

So, today, the team (according to their website) consists of 100 employees, and it has taken the studio nine years to get to this point. It is difficult for us to predict or speculate on how this can be financially viable, and the starting point is always that creative souls should take the time they need. But even with all that wiggle room, it is still difficult to imagine how it could have taken PlayDead nine years, and that is, again, without any real signs of life other than a few images from the mysterious game.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 - Under development in various forms for 18 years

At the time of writing, Beyond Good & Evil 2 holds the record for the game that has spent the longest time in something resembling active development. Exactly how a studio as large as Ubisoft Montpellier delegates its resources is extremely difficult to say, but we continue to assume that there are several hundred employees actively working on the game, and in the summer of 2023, the game even got a new director in the form of Fawzi Mesmar, after the previous director sadly passed away suddenly.

The aforementioned record is 15 years, but it was given to the project in 2022, which means that it has only increased its lead right now. This means that the game is approaching an active development period of 18 years, although with the uncertainty that we do not know exactly how active the development has been during different periods.

However, it is striking how Ubisoft manages to continuously unveil projects, only to let them lie dormant for so long. The game got its "re-reveal" in 2017 - that's eight years ago now. And that's in addition to the long and strange period that came before, where Ubisoft directly refused to formally acknowledge that the game existed, even though they had done just that.

Will it ever be released? Yes, it's really hard to say, but the project is still under active development, and Ubisoft has had ample opportunity to pull the plug but has chosen not to do so continuously.

Judas - initial concept developed 10 years ago

Judas actually emerged from obscurity some time ago, and although the game recently missed its launch estimate given by Take-Two itself, which claimed it would be released before March 31, 2025 (that didn't happen), we know a lot more about it than the two previous titles.

But it still deserves a place on this list due to its wild development period, to say the least. Ken Levine left Irrational after the launch of BioShock Infinite to form Ghost Story Games in 2017, and although he presented his theoretical idea of "narrative Lego" at various trade shows on several occasions, he and his studio were paid for a full five years before they finally unveiled Judas.

As mentioned, things have been going stronger since then, and the game has been tested by both the Friends-per-Second podcast and others, and at one point, it was supposed to be released a short while ago. We therefore assume that the game is just around the corner, but it is also Levine's first game in 12 years.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines II - in development for approximately 10 years

In 2019, we played Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines II at Gamescom, published a promising preview, and showed an extended gameplay trailer that certainly gave the impression that even though the game might not be completely finished, it was rapidly approaching completion.

It is inconceivable that six years later, we are still without a concrete release date, that the studio behind the advanced version in 2019 no longer exists, and that the game today, while sharing certain similarities with the project we previewed, is something completely different.

Many of the games on this list have been showcased, only for the press and the outside world to gradually realise that the title in question was infinitely far from actual realisation, but here it was already a reality in 2019, and yet it went so badly wrong that it remains uncertain whether the new developer, The Chinese Room, will be able to release it this year.

Star Wars Eclipse - we haven't heard anything for almost four years

We don't actually know if Star Wars Eclipse exists in any real sense, that's the truth. Whereas we played Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines II in 2019, Eclipse was announced in December 2021, and since then we haven't seen a single sign of life, a single piece of officially released concept art, or a shred of information from developer Quantic Dream.

We have been promised a more action-oriented game than the studio usually manages, but other than that, we have no information about gameplay systems, actual characters, or what the structure actually looks like. In other words, this was a cinematic "reveal trailer" apparently created before the studio actually had any real plan, because if they had, the game would not have been forgotten for almost four years without any other form of information.

The game has not been directly cancelled, and because Quantic Dream is publicly traded, we know that they are still working on it, as they are required to communicate any potential cancellation to their investors, but whether it will be similar, whether it will be called "Eclipse," and how long it will be before an actual release, we simply do not know.

Star Citizen - the first "module" was released 13 years ago

Star Citizen will undoubtedly, once again, result in a few individuals either commenting on the article or going so far as to contact us directly (this has happened several times) to complain about the way we have covered the game and its myriad of controversies.

They would probably argue that the game has, to some extent, already been released, as paying customers can play certain modules of it, which are gradually becoming more interconnected. But developer Cloud Imperium has repeatedly stated that there is no 1.0 launch in sight, even though we are moving towards it, and this has been the case for many, many years.

Furthermore, in this case, there is the discussion of whether it is actually more lucrative for the studio to maintain the current status quo, where a few "whales" pay staggering sums for digital spaceships and other forms of micro-transactions in the game without it actually being finished, thereby also financing what is undoubtedly the most expensive game production ever.

We ask the same open question as always: "Do you think Star Citizen will be released in a 1.0 version?"