Prey 2 put on indefinite hold

Earlier on last month, rumours started floating around that Bethesda was planning on cancelling Prey 2, the open world FPS currently in development at Human Head Studios. And this upset fans of the series because the game was looking rather swell.

Now it seems the game hasn’t been cancelled but has been put on hold due to certain internal problems. According to Shacknews, Human Head Studios weren’t too happy with their contract with ZeniMax (Bethesda’s parent company) and had not worked on the game since November 2011. Since then quite a few of Human Head’s employees have been laid off and since no negotiation has been reached, Human Head seemed to be short staffed as well.

In the meantime, Bethesda’s PR sent out a comment to GameInformer that goes something like this:

Development of Prey 2 has not been cancelled but the game will not be released in 2012 as planned. The delay is due to the fact that game development has not progressed satisfactorily this past year, and the game does not currently meet our quality standards. Prey 2 has shown great promise and we regret disappointing our fans. We have made a substantial investment in game development to deliver the experience fans want. We are determined only to release the AAA game that fans rightfully expect, and are unwilling to compromise our quality standards to meet a release schedule.

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Considering Prey was in development for nearly ten years, you may see a certain pattern emerging here. Still I’m glad this game has not been completely written off because from what we’ve seen, it showed tremendous potential.