The new BioShock has been in development a lot longer than you think

You might’ve seen the news we confirmed earlier this morning, about BioShock making its return with an all-new adventure. Cloud Chamber is currently hard at work on the game, which isn’t expected for a few years. But what you may not have realized is that the game has actually been in development a lot longer than you first imagined. Like, dating back to 2015.

BioShock was in development how long?

The report comes from Kotaku, who reveal that development began during 2015 — or perhaps even earlier — with a different team. Certain Affinity, who had previously worked on shooter franchises like Call of Duty and Doom, was called in to make the game.

Certain Affinity’s BioShock game was in development for some time before 2K made the move to scrap its development entirely. As a result, 2K began to move things in-house, handing control over to its own Cloud Chamber teams. This means the studio was actually created long before the announcement today. Some of the team actually worked next to Hangar 13, who were developing Mafia III at the time.

Why 2K didn’t make note of this prolonged development is unknown. Perhaps it was just trying to keep quiet on the BioShock forefront until there was a suitable game to show off. Or maybe Certain Affinity had a different idea for the game than the publisher expected. That could’ve easily resulted in 2K taking back control.

Neither the developer nor publisher had any kind of comment about the project. And considering confidentiality agreements and what-not, we likely won’t hear anything from it. Still, it’d be kind of fascinating to see what the developers at Certain Affinity had in mind for the series following the success of BioShock Infinite.

If you’d like to read more about the report, make sure to check out Kotaku’s full article for yourself.