PlayStation Exclusive Game Wild Reportedly Dead After 7 Years

It’s believed that Wild, the PlayStation exclusive survival adventure game from Wild Sheep Studio, has been canceled. News on the game has been quiet for years, with no development updates from the team since 2017. While an official announcement has yet to be made, an industry insider has stated that Wild is no longer being worked on.

Wild was originally revealed to the world during gamescom 2014, before being shown at Paris Games Week in 2015. Following that, Wild Sheep founder Michel Ancel shared images from the game in 2017, but there’s been no updates since. Developed for PlayStation 4, the game would have taken place during the prehistoric Neolithic period, with a world the size of Europe. Wild was set to offer a truly unique experience thanks to its procedurally generated world in which every single creature could have been controlled as a playable character, including wolves, sheep, and even trout. Fans would have played as a shaman able to control endless living creatures in order to explore, battle, and solve puzzles. Wild was believed to be in trouble after news on the game stopped coming, leaving fans to speculate on its future.

In a new GiantBomb video (via VGC), journalist Jeff Grubb shared insight into the current state of Wild, claiming that the title is no more. Corrborrating many players’ beliefs that the project has been internally canceled, Grubb said: “I can confirm that game is fully done. There is no Wild anymore… Wild is dead.” While Grubb didn’t reveal his source of the information, the industry insider did note that he believes the studio will be working on another project together. He said:

“I think [Wild Sheep founder] Michel Ancel abandoned the project… he’s not working on it anymore, the project got shut down. The team that was working on it was looking at maybe trying to stay together and work on other projects. 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’.”

While neither Sony nor Ancel has responded to Grubb’s comments at the time of writing, Ancel left the games industry in 2020, which could be related to the game’s alleged cancelation. Ancel was working on Wild and Ubisoft’s Beyond Good & Evil 2 at the time of his departure, though Ubisoft stated at the time that his leaving wouldn’t impact the game’s development. Beyond Good & Evil 2 has also been the subject of speculation after updates on the game went silent following its reveal during E3 2017. It’s now 2021 and the game doesn’t yet have a release window. In 2020, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said the game was progressing well, but fans are in the dark as to when the game might launch.

While Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still coming, Wild‘s future is looking a lot less certain. The game showed a lot of promise in early trailers, and it’s possible Sony wants to keep the idea on board, perhaps with a new vision. Wild Sheep is currently hiring new staff, suggesting the team is working on something as Grubb suggests, but whether or not it’s Wild or a project related to Wild is unclear. It’s hoped either the studio or Sony will respond to claims of the game’s alleged cancelation soon.

Source: GiantBomb (via VGC)

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