Prey 2 officially killed six years after it was first unveiled

Bethesda has confirmed what the entire industry suspected to be true – Prey 2 has been cancelled.

"It was game we believed in, but we never felt that it got to where it needed to be – we never saw a path to success if we finished it," Bethesda vice president Pete Hines told Cnet.

"It wasn’t up to our quality standard and we decided to cancel it. It’s no longer in development. That wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s one that won’t surprise many folks given that we hadn’t been talking about it.

"Human Head Studios is no longer working on [it]. It’s a franchise we still believe we can do something with – we just need to see what that something is."

Prey 2 was first revealed in an interview with Scott Miller and was then re-announced by Bethesda in 2011.

In April 2012 Bethesda insisted that the project was still alive, although admitted that it would not hit its 2012 release date – a delay that some blamed on an alleged contract dispute.

A year later it was rumoured that development of the game had been moved from Human Head Studios to Dishonored creators Arkane. That’s a rumour which kept cropping up, despite claims to the contrary.