Duke Nukem Forever officially holds the Guinness World Record for the longest development period for a video game, but that record has now been beaten by Beyond Good & Evil 2, as noted in a recent tweet by Brendan Sinclair, Gamesindustry.biz’s managing editor, who pointed out that it’s been 5,234 days since the first trailer for Ubisoft’s mythical prequel was first shared. That number amounts to 14 years, 4 months, and 1 day, a length of time that exceeds the 14:43 years:days that it took for Duke Nukem Forever to finally release on June 10, 2011.
Duke Nukem Forever went 5,156 days from its announcement in 1997 to its release in 2011.
— Brendan Sinclair (@BrendanSinclair) September 28, 2022
It has been 5,234 days since the first Beyond Good & Evil 2 trailer was released.
From Guinness World Records:
Officially announced on 28 April 1997 by developer 3D Realms, the FPS Duke Nukem Forever took another 14 years 44 days before it finally released on 10 June 2011. According to Venturebeat, the game’s production was “plagued with delays due to changes in the game engine and other issues”. 3D Realms eventually closed in 2009, leaving Borderlands developer Gearbox Software to be tasked with finishing the game by publisher Take-Two Interactive who acquired the title’s rights.
The most recent news article that Ubisoft published about Beyond Good & Evil 2 appears to be from July 12, 2020. “…we are currently concentrating on core development and production milestones, so rest assured that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is well underway,” a portion of the post reads, followed by recent comments from visitors who are convinced that the game is vaporware.
Discussion (11 replies)
Join Discussion →What a wonderful record to hold. And DNF turned out "fantastic" after that lengthy period.
Star Citizen Says hi.
Michel Ancel left a long time ago. Even if BG&E 2 does eventually come out, the main mind behind it is long gone, so who the f*ck knows how it'll turn out. Those of us who enjoyed the first game gave up on the sequel long before Ancel left. And it wasn't even gonna be a sequel anyways, it's a prequel, so not very helpful for those who wanted to continue the story, and have questions answered about sh1t that happened in the first game/at the end of the first game.
I expect this game to eventually become the new record holder.
Are they actually doing anything?
These things are misleading that way, having a meeting about, and doing a manifestation board ain't development.
I think ubisoft quietly killed this one. I really don't see them still putting money into this development hole.
Star Citizen will never get a concrete release date, it has morphed into a kind of live service.
The game we should be mentioning is Squadron 42, the mythic single player counterpart to star citizen, that they are allegedly working on.
Although my theory is that they completely stopped working on SQ42 around 2015, the only question is when will it be officially cancelled, rather than released.
I didn't realize the trailer was released so long ago (2008) for some reason I thought it was around the same time as Star Citizen. Ubi soft would have to release an official statement that this has been canceled before Star Citizen can take this crown.
I'm actually thinking Squadron 42 and it's assets will eventually be given to another developer to finish so Cloud Imperium can "put all focus and resources on Star Citizen". This will happen when sales of Star Citizen's funding starts waning. The release of Squadron 42 will once again super charge the funding on Star Citizen, especially if it's good but even if it's barely average the brainwashed fans will just blame it on the new developer and double down on Star Citizen.
Yeah, what developer wants to finish an AAA game that they then have to give for free to all backers of Star Citizen?
Yea financially speaking that would be a good idea.
For the same reason developers put their games on a service like Games Pass. They get paid a flat rate for their work, just like anyone else on the planet who provides a service to someone else.