It has been a good decade since the last mainline entry to the Bioware series was released and it appears fans might be waiting longer for the next installment.
Bioshock 4, the tentative name for the next installment, was announced by 2K and Cloud Chamber in 2019. Four years have passed since the reveal and we have had numerous rumors about the upcoming game but nothing really concrete. According to reports, Bioshock 4 will be an open-world game set in Antarctic city of Borealis.
The new information for Bioshock 4 suggests that the game isn’t coming out in 2025, as previously reported. Twisted Voxel reports that the ArtStation profile for Cloud Chamber Senior Concept Artist Mark Sztaba stated that Bioshock 4 is coming in 2028. A quick check of Sztaba’s LinkedIn profile reveals that the artist has been working at Cloud Chamber for the past seven months.
Sztaba has since removed the entry from his ArtStation profile but not before eagle-eyed fans took screenshots. The removal of Bioware 4 from his resume has led fans to believe that the release date is accurate.
If the information is correct, then fans may be waiting another five years before the game comes out. Bioshock 4 will be nine years in development by that time and it will be a full fifteen years since the release of Bioshock Infinite. This is an unusually long development cycle even by today’s standards.
There have been reports that Cloud Chamber has encountered trouble during the development of Bioshock 4. Previous leaks suggest that the game has undergone several revisions since its announcement, allegedly due to management issues and the uncertainty that the upcoming sequel will turn a profit.
Fans believe that many of the development woes are a result of Bioshock creator Ken Levine leaving the project after closing down Irrational Games. There has been a clamor from the Bioshock community to rehire Levine for Bioshock 4. However, the developer is already working on a project titled Judas under Ghost Story Games.
2K Games and Cloud Chamber have not made an official announcement about Bioshock 4’s release date so please take the information with a grain of salt. The 2028 release date may just have been a simple typographical error on the part of the artist prompting its removal.
If Bioshock 4 does indeed release in 2028, it just means that the development team is taking its time to create the best possible experience for fans of the series. However, it could also mean that there have been a lot of issues within the development cycle. We just hope that it is the former and fans will get what they waited so long for.
