Back in 2014, Ubisoft had announced a survival game that was slotted to be a PlayStation exclusive by the name of Wild that never saw the light of day. Now, former designer at Ubisoft, Michel Ancel, has come out to discuss what led to the cancellation of the game. In an interview with Superpouvoir, Ancel would explain how Ubisoft took over and “crushed” the project.

Wild had an unfortunate fate. In 2018, we had a very nice playable version, but we took a long time to upgrade the game to PS5, which slowed down production. On Sony’s side, there were major management changes and the game was stopped.

Ubisoft offered to take it over, and shortly afterwards Sony decided to get it back, even offering to double our budgets. Unfortunately, contracts with Ubisoft were well advanced and we turned down Sony’s offer. What a shame.

Ancel also mentioned that he believes the real problems arose when Ubisoft Paris took over and Tommy François, who eventually left the company due accusations of sexual misconduct, was put in charge.

It was during this period that I burned out and, unfortunately, the game fell into the hands of Ubisoft’s editorial department in Paris, which was itself in chaos,

I was no longer there to defend the game, which was literally crushed by people in this department who were asking for all sorts of changes without actually playing the game. A real scandal. After two years of wandering, the game was abandoned on the pretext that it no longer corresponded to the initial game.

Ancel dove more into depth about François, stating:

It’s important to understand that, at the time, the editorial department was in the midst of an explosion following the internal affairs surrounding Tommy François, who, incidentally, was in charge of Wild.

In hindsight, I think we can talk about a real burnout that took place at the end of 2019. At that point, my two flagship projects were drifting apart for various reasons. I should have taken a break a long time ago, but instead I kept working even harder.

Ancel would go on to elaborate on his burnout, saying, “At the beginning of 2020, I decided to stop everything, especially as my family life was seriously affected by my burn-out. I had mismanaged my energy and no longer had the strength to continue in video games.”