Ken Levine’s Ghost Story Games reportedly stuck in development hell

According to a new Bloomberg report, Ken Levine’s new, ish, studio Ghost Story Games has been suffering through development hell amidst numerous reboots and changes in direction.

In the report, multiple employees pin the problems plaguing the studio on Levine himself, criticizing his management style which often led to burnout after he would scrap months of work in order to pursue a new direction. 

According to past employees, Levine would often change his mind about the direction of his unannounced game after playing hit indie titles such as Dead Cells or Void Bastards, insisting that his game be overhauled to be more like those indie darlings, rather than whatever he was cooking up in the first place. 

While employees were reportedly being left burnt out, demoralized, and fearing for their careers because of this volatility within the studio, Levine has continued on undeterred thanks to his relationship with Take-Two Interactive, which allows his studio to exist as a “rounding error” to the Grand Theft Auto publisher. 

This financial security has allowed Ghost Story Games seemingly all the time it could ever want however Levine’s next game seems no closer to release because of it. In a panel discussion from 2017 at EGX, Levine stated that “in almost every game I’ve ever worked on, you realize you’re running out of time, and then you make the game,” but with no deadline in sight, making the game seems to be a slow process. 

The only feature which seems to be concrete within Levine’s unannounced game is a“narrative lego concept,” in which huge portions of the game would change depending on player action, a feature we’ve seen numerous times now since Ghost Story Games’ founding in 2014. 

While there is no official word on just when Ghost Story Games’ first game might release, one employee told Bloomberg that an estimated release could still be two years away.