There are accounts from various developers/people that Bethesda's publishing side will provide a vague set of milestones that need to be met, then, once development has progressed far enough, they'll arbitrarily say development isn't up to snuff and will threaten to cancel the project unless the developer sells themselves to Bethesda.
Human Head decided to have a strike of sorts after this "proposal" and that ended up causing their version of Prey 2 to be canceled.
There are accounts from various developers/people that Bethesda's publishing side will provide a vague set of milestones that need to be met, then, once development has progressed far enough, they'll arbitrarily say development isn't up to snuff and will threaten to cancel the project unless the developer sells themselves to Bethesda.
Human Head decided to have a strike of sorts after this "proposal" and that ended up causing their version of Prey 2 to be canceled.
"The IP is ours. We still own Prey, and it is still a franchise that we think is interesting and worth exploring, and something that we would like to do a game with in in the future. But Prey 2, as a 'thing', is over. It's not like 'cancelled, but we'll take it to somebody else', it's done. It's not going to exist, it's not going to some other studio to work on or see if we can make something of it."
Just in time for a re-reveal at VGX?
(Please don't kill me) it looked like an instance of "Ubisoft Game", to me.
Arkane's version already sounds better on paper ("System Shock spiritual successor").
Fuck you Bethesda for cancelling an almost finished game due to politics and for fucking the studio over.
Also fuck outta here with the quality standards, because you ain't got any Bethesda. They're easily one of the scummiest and shady publishers out there.
The saddest thing is that all of this is true, Bethesda is scummy and Pete Hines is master of lies, but at the same time Bethesda just keeps making awesome singleplayer games without forcing shitty MP on them. Evil Within, Dishonored, Wolfenstein, Skyrim, New Vegas, Rage...all these are just great SP games and I am excited as fuck about both Dishonored 2 and Prey 2 from Arkane.
The saddest thing is that all of this is true, Bethesda is scummy and Pete Hines is master of lies, but at the same time Bethesda just keeps making awesome singleplayer games without forcing shitty MP on them. Evil Within, Dishonored, Wolfenstein, Skyrim, New Vegas, Rage...all these are just great SP games and I am excited as fuck about both Dishonored 2 and Prey 2 from Arkane.
Of course then they flush all their profits from SP games into MMO trainwreck that is ESO, but that is another story..
Hopefully Human Head can leverage some of their ideas for Prey 2 with another publisher.
ALL their profits? Yo, how does business work?
They publish those games. Going by what we know of their practices, those games were/will be great in spite of Bethesda.
It's encouraging to see developers stand up for their work.
Ex-Human Head developers Nathan Cheever and Amelia Von Haden.
They publish them, which means they greenlit them in the first place and then financed them. That is somewhat important aspect of game development.
The saddest thing is that all of this is true, Bethesda is scummy and Pete Hines is master of lies, but at the same time Bethesda just keeps making awesome singleplayer games without forcing shitty MP on them. Evil Within, Dishonored, Wolfenstein, Skyrim, New Vegas, Rage...all these are just great SP games and I am excited as fuck about both Dishonored 2 and Prey 2 from Arkane.
Of course then they flush all their profits from SP games into MMO trainwreck that is ESO, but that is another story..
Rage has multiplayer: a four-player car racing mode (which essentially acts as the game's deathmatch mode) and a two-player co-op mode based on stories told by NPCs throughout the SP campaign.
They don't deserve any respect for strong-arming every developer they work with into letting themselves be bought out.
You've just acknowledged their terrible business practices — less terrible publishers could've funded good games by Arkane, Obsidian, Etc. Just lament that the developers working on Bethesda games have been roped in at all. There's no good reason to feel conflicted here because "Bethesda makes awesome games" when it's actually the people they're trying to hostilely take over who are the ones making them.
True, I completely forgot about that. Yeah that is a shame, they should never have made that MP (or did anyone play it?) and instead make proper ending to the singleplayer. That ending they got was just atrociously cut.
We can confirm that Human Head Studios has not been involved with Prey 2 for some time, Tim Gerritsen, business development director at Human Head told VG247.
While we are disappointed that we wont be able to deliver our vision of the game, we remain proud of our work on the franchise, which we feel speaks for itself, including the award-winning presentation of the game at E3 2011.
We enjoyed working with the many talented people at Bethesda, and we wish them all the best of luck with any future plans they may have for the franchise.