After a decade of uncertainty about the game's status, Wild Sheep Studio's creative director Steven ter Heide has confirmed that the PlayStation exclusive title Wild is no longer in active development and appears to have been canceled. It was thought the game would survive until 2021, but the inevitable has finally been confirmed as the studio has moved on to new projects.
Wilde was stuck in development hell.
Wild's development history is worthy of the game's name. Developer Wild Sheep Studio was founded by Rayman creator Michel Ancel. The studio announced its first project, the PS4-exclusive online survival adventure Wild, with a flashy trailer at Gamescom in 2014. In the years since, there's been gameplay, some concept art, one off-screen image, and a trademark update that suggested the game was still in development.
The situation was complicated by Michel Ancel's abrupt departure from the games industry entirely in 2020 to focus on his new wildlife conservation efforts. Accusations of his harmful behavior and mismanagement at Ubisoft have since emerged, but he claims that this is not why he left the industry.
Wildsheep vowed to continue working without him. The studio continued to recruit new staff despite rumors of cancellation, and listed the game as a current project until 2021. Then things got quiet. After three years of silence, Ter Heide announced on X (formerly Twitter) that the studio was “No longer actively working” Wilde. It looks like Wilde has finally been canceled.
The studio seems keen to move on from gaming – Wild Sheep has pared down its website to a single landing page and even changed its logo – but details about the studio's new project are scarce at the moment, with the studio's description saying only that it “loves to make games filled with positive, memorable characters and believable worlds.”
