Despite being announced back in 2019, the next BioShock game being developed by Cloud Chamber has been suspiciously quiet. This has led to a lot of speculation that the project isn’t going too smoothly, and now a new report suggests those fears to be well grounded.
That’s according to Jason Schreier of Bloomberg who has released a new report. If his anonymous sources are to be believed, BioShock 4 recently failed a project review conducted by executives at 2K Games, the publisher.
As a result of the failure, Schreier states that Cloud Chamber’s head Kelley Gilmore has been removed, while creative director Hogarth da la Plante has been moved to a publishing role. A quick look at Hogarth’s LinkedIn profile indicates he was moved to 2K Publishing last month as a Franchise Creative Director. Kelley Gilmore hasn’t updated her profile thus far.
A spokesperson did confirm the management changes to Bloomberg.
More worryingly, in a recent meeting staff were told that Cloud Chamber “needs to become more agile and efficient” which has led to staff concern about potential layoffs.
As for the game itself, the executive review identified the narrative as a weak point in need of improvement. According to what Schreier heard, it will be revamped in the coming months.
At the end of his article, Schreier drops another piece of information: the planned remake of the original BioShock – which we heard about last year – has been cancelled.
All in all, it looks like we won’t be seeing a whisper of the new BioShock any time soon. The narrative is the most important part of a BioShock game, so if it needs to be revamped I can’t imagine it’s even close to being ready to release.