Creator of Beyond Good and Evil 2, Rabbids, and Rayman franchise Michel Ancel will be leaving the gaming industry to work on a wildlife sanctuary.
In Ancel’s official Instragram account, he delivered the news stating that he is leaving the industry and will follow his other passion, wildlife.
Here is Ancel’s statement:
Today is very special for me. After more than 30 years, I’ve decided to stop working on video games and fully focus on my second passion : Wild Life !
My new project takes place in the real world and consists in a wild life open sanctuary dedicated to education , nature lovers and … wild animals.
In regards to the still-in-development Beyond Good and Evil 2, he assured the fans that the team behind it will continue the development without his supervision.
Ancel’s statement continues here:
Many of you might want to know what will happen to Wild and BGE2. No worries, since many months now the teams are autonomous and the projects are going super well. Beautiful things to be seen soon.
Senior Producer Guillaume Brunier also confirmed of Ancel’s departure from the gaming industry in another statement.
Check it here:
Michel Ancel has decided to stop working in video games in order to focus on other personal projects, and will no longer be part of the BG&E2 team. For years, Michel imparted his creative vision and helped us remain faithful to BG&E’s incredible universe. His uncompromising passion pushed us to redefine what was possible in crafting an expansive, multicultural, and futuristic science-fiction world. As we move forward, we are all committed to remaining true to this vision.
As Michel noted, he hasn’t been directly involved in BG&E2 for some time now, as the team have been hard at work building on top of the solid creative foundation he helped shape. The team’s collective strength has us well on our way to developing a flagship next-generation action-adventure game. We recently passed an important internal milestone, delivering a build that proves our Space Pirate Fantasy and offers hours of gameplay and an incredible level of freedom in a seamless online sandbox, building upon the promise of our tech demos shown at E3. I’m incredibly proud of the team’s perseverance, dedication to each other and ongoing commitment to developing an amazing game.
To make it work, the team is working hard right now and recruiting more staff. They also added Ubisoft Paris as a partner studio for assistance. Their next milestone that they are trying to achieve right now is to share more and show the game in action sometime next year.