Intro

Judas made a splash in 2024 during its marketing window which is a surprise to no one. It is the spiritual successor to BioShock, one of the most beloved video game series ever and it’s made by the people who made BioShock in the first place.

However, in 2026, it has fallen into oblivion, with direct competitors enjoying much more attention and Strauss Zelnick not even mentioning it even when a comment about it seemed like a slam dunk.

Strauss Zelnick on BioShock and dead ends

In an interview with Game File’s Stephen Totilo, Strauss Zelnick lamented the lack of a new entry in BioShock series following the 2013 release of BioShock Infinite. According to him, the company “wasted a lot of time and money chasing down some creative alleys that turned out to be dead ends”, implying there were attempts to develop another entry even after Irrational Games closed down.

Considering the studio shut its doors almost immediately after Infinite’s release, it means that other people would be in charge of the new BioShock. Ken Levine opened a new studio, Ghost Story Games, under Take-Two’s umbrella, focusing on games with non-gigantic budges, presumably so the development hell of BioShock Infinite could be avoided with their next game.

Ironically, that seems to be the exact thing happening with Judas, GSG’s inaugural title and the spiritual successor to BioShock.

Where is Judas?

Larger playable portions of a game are usually not shown until it’s somewhat close to release. When SkillUp released a video after having accessed 5 hours worth of playtime, fans were happy and thought the game is right around the corner. Unfortunately, that video is more than 2 years old as of writing this article.

On top of that, the past couple of years saw nothing but radio silence about Judas, sparking rumors and hints of panic about the game’s development hell or even cancellation. Now, Zelnick’s complete lack of mention of the game during the interview with Totilo added a little bit of fuel to the spark.

If one were to check Judas’ popularity by wishlists on Steam, they would see it sitting way below Clockwork Revolution and Atomic Heart 2, both direct competitors seeking to capture that BioShock feeling. Now it might seem like enough to cause a panic.

This is one of those good news, bad news situations. The good news is that there is no reason to panic about Judas right now. This has happened before and Ken Levine’s games are all but guaranteed to have a protracted development cycle but they do come out eventually and mostly turn into hits.

Onto the bad news – it is directly connected to the statement above. Just like BioShock Infinite, Judas’ development well hidden behind the curtain right now and the progress won’t be revealed until the higher ups get fed up and demand a release date.

After all, the same happened with BioShock Infinite which required outside help to get the game across the finish line. It turned out to be a massive success by any and all metrics.