Beyond Good & Evil Anniversary Edition released by mistake was unfinished

Ubisoft says it’s “not indicative of the final game”

Marco Wutz | Nov 29, 2023

Beyond Good & Evil Anniversary Edition released by mistake was unfinished /

Beyond Good & Evil fans worldwide are letting out a sigh of relief at this piece of news: The title’s Anniversary Edition, which was released earlier today for some Ubisoft+ subscribers by mistake, was “an early development version” that “is not indicative of the final game,” according to Ubisoft. Why is this good news? Because it very much looked like an unfinished product in some of those screenshots floating around and would not exactly have been a great celebration of the original.

Ubisoft stated that more on the 20th Anniversary Edition would be revealed in early 2024, which is also the time window it will launch in, and has apologized for all the confusion caused by the erroneous release of that early build.

“As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Beyond Good & Evil, our commitment to delivering a game that meets the high expectations of our fans is unwavering,” Ubisoft continued.

Beyond Good & Evil came out in 2003 for PC, Xbox, PS2, and Nintendo GameCube. Following the investigative reporter, spy, assassin, and martial artist Jade on her mission to uncover an alien conspiracy, the action-adventure combines puzzle-solving, photography, and combat. It’s considered to be one of the best games ever produced, which was quite a twist of fate after an early version was not well received, which prompted a variety of reworks and overhauls. After launch, the title was not considered to be a commercial success.

A sequel has been worked on since 2016 and was officially announced in 2017 about which information is so sparse that its continued development has repeatedly been doubted. The game’s creator, Michel Ancel, left Ubisoft in 2020.

In 2020, Netflix announced a movie adaptation of the game, but nothing has been heard about that ever since then either – quite on brand, one might say.

Published Nov 29, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg