Prince of Persia creator shares his sympathies with The Sands of Time remake devs: "Artists put their hearts into their work"

Last month, Ubisoft pretty unceremoniously cancelled a bunch of games, the most notable of the bunch being that long gestating Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake. This came as part of a major restructuring at the company, putting up to 200 jobs at their Paris HQ at risk, ultimately leading to a call for an international strike, and the firing of one Assassin’s Creed designer. It’s all a concerning mess, and now the creator of Prince of Persia and lead designer on the original Sands of Time Jordan Mechner has shared his sympathy to devs affected by the remake’s cancellation.

“The remake’s cancellation as part of Ubisoft’s restructuring was disappointing news to all fans who’d been eagerly awaiting it, myself included,” Mechner wrote in a blog post on his personal website (ta, PC Gamer). “My sympathy goes to the development team in Montreal; I can only imagine how they must feel. Having a project killed is a brutal experience. It’s an aspect of the game industry that the public doesn’t often see, but developers are all too familiar with.”

Mechner also highlighted how damaging this can be for the spirit of younger developers who don’t have many shipped games on their CV yet. “It’s tough to suddenly absorb that the past four years of hard work you were proud of, and looking forward to seeing out in the world as your new calling card, will now never see daylight. Words like loss and grieving might seem exaggerated, but artists put their hearts into their work.”

I found this line from Mechner to be highly pertinent: “Memories of nights and weekends spent in studio crunch instead of at home with loved ones, sacrifices that felt worth it at the time, only add to the pain retrospectively once their object ceases to exist.” Sure would be nice if this whole system of taking nigh on half a decade plus to make a game just kind of ended at some point!

The Sands of Time remake seemingly wasn’t the only notable game to get the axe, as it was also recently reported that an online Assassin’s Creed game was in the works, but that’s supposedly been canned now too. Anyone else feeling tired? Yeesh.