WiLD was announced in 2014 with a glitzy trailer at Gamescom. Since then we’ve seen a brief glimpse of gameplay, some concept art, and a single offscreen image. Now it seems like that’s all we’re ever going to see. As reported by VGC, Jeff Grubb announced the game had been cancelled on the latest episode of his Grubbsnax show. The team is reportedly looking at other projects to keep the studio going.
The online survival adventure was set 10,000 years ago when humanity and nature stood an equal chance of survival. The world featured a variety of creatures both real and fantastical with players learning more about the world around them as they grew older. Now players won’t be learning anything about the world as Grubb said he could “confirm that game is fully done. There is no WiLD anymore… WiLD is dead”.
Grubb then added he thought the project had been shut down because the game’s creator Michel Ancel had “abandoned the project”. Ancel has completely retired from gaming, exiting the industry just before he was accused of toxic behavior and poor management whilst working on Beyond Good and Evil 2 at Ubisoft. Job listings for the team at Wild Sheep Studio seemed to suggest development on the game was continuing without him. It’s worth noting that despite Grubb’s claims, the developer’s website still lists WiLD as their current project and several of the individual team members’ LinkedIn profiles list the game as a current project.
Apparently “the team that was working on it was looking at maybe trying to stay together and work on other projects”, according to Grubb. “I don’t know what happened with that, but they were like, ‘we’re not working on [WiLD] anymore, but we do have a lot of talent here, so maybe we can work on some stuff'”. Wild Sheep currently has nearly 50 employees and are still recruiting for a handful of vacant positions, so the team does intend to keep going for the near future at least. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens next.
[Source: Grubbsnax via Video Games Chronicle]
