If this is true what a waste of Arkane's talents and Human Head's work. Bethesda Softworks sure is building a reputation as a pretty nasty publisher.
"How would you feel if Bioshock Infinite was ripped from Ken Levine and his Irrational Game team’s hands only months before it was to be released?
What if the publisher then forced a different developer to throw everything out… the story, the art, the animation, the characters then remake it from scratch?
Do you remember what happened to Bioshock 2? That was created by a different team and didn’t capture the magic of the original.
How would Prey 2 suffer in that situation?
There’s a vicious rumor going around that Bethesda is secretly forcing Arkane Studios to scrap Human Head’s Prey 2 and remake it from scratch. Other rumors suggest Bethesda tried to shop it around to other studios during the past year. Rebellion Studios turned it down because Bethesda was offering obscenely low funds. They tried working with Obsidian and failed. Now we hear they’re making Arkane’s Austin studio ignore everything Human Head’s created and use the Dishonored game engine to make their own version.
Should the successors of the original Prey and creators of Prey 2 have their work secretly taken away? Over the past year more rumors about Bethesda and the way they’ve treated Human Head as well as other developers has suggested Bethesda and their parent company Zenimax are mistreating the developers they hire.
Should publishers be allowed to continue damaging the people who create the worlds you love to play? When there’s been no clear indication there’s a funding problem or competency issue, what else would motivate Bethesda to waste over a year of development time, forbid Human Head to finish the last parts of Prey 2, then scrap it all to make a different developer remake it? Money obviously isn’t an issue, since having a different team make a new version would cost more time and money.
Prove this rumor is wrong Bethesda! Break the silence you’ve kept for over a year now about Prey 2‘s fate. Silence will only imply guilt because a decent publisher would never treat their faithful fans with such disregard."
http://www.aliennoire.com/home/news/vicious-rumors/
It makes sense since Bethesda's removed the game from the line-up and won't address any concern expressed about Prey 2. It's pretty cruel of Bethesda to take away a nearly complete game (it was on track to ship March 2012) from an 16 year independent studio over contractual issues and hand control over to inappropriate studios like Rebellion or Obsidian. That's bad enough. But it's truly evil to scrap Human Head's work.
Also, what would this mean for Dishonored 2? Presumably, Arkane Lyon will be working on the final piece of DLC while starting pre-production for the sequel. Austin was an important part of Dishonored. Why would Bethesda make them work on someone else's design?
I hope this is total nonsense. I'm sure Bethesda will let us know. I mean it's been over a year since the last update, but that's nothing to worry about, right? I'm sure Bethesda's given Human Head all the resources they need to make a great game and Arkane Austin are happily working on Dishonored 2.
» Sat Jun 01, 2013 10:58 am 
