Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake actor Eman Ayaz, who likely played the role of Farah in the scrapped Ubisoft title, has called the game’s cancellation the “most devastating moment” of their acting career.
While avoiding specifics about her role in the scrapped adventure game, Ayaz revealed in a YouTube video that she spend three years working on the Ubisoft game. While the actor spent multiple years of their life working on the title, they were not informed about the game’s cancellation, instead finding out via news articles on the day.
Ayaz explained that she earned the mystery role for an unconfirmed Ubisoft title—which appears to be the Prince of Persia remake—through a “rigorous audition process, including a self-tape audition, an in-person callback, and a chemistry read that I had to fly out of the city for”.
The actor said that the team working on the game became “like a family” as she watched the game “grow through countless stages of development”. They also revealed that “just two months ago, I filmed marketing for this project, everything had been running smoothly and that was the last I had heard. We were all looking forward to it being released this year”.
“The worst part is that you can’t openly grieve about it either, which is a hard part to wrap your head around.”
Eman Ayaz discussing the cancellation of a three-year game project.
Ayaz called her discovery of the game’s cancellation an “emotional whiplash” after being told about its fate from her brother via a WhatsApp message. The actor explained that she had turned down numerous job opportunities over the past three years to continue working on the game adding: “It was the best performance of my career and now no one will ever see it.”
Additionally, the actor revealed that the game’s release would have helped to acquire a U.S. work visa to book other projects. However, with the game’s cancellation and her NDA restricting her from sharing her work on the game, she will not be able to use her work as proof of her career.
While Ubisoft did not inform Ayaz of the game’s cancellation, the studio did release a statement to fans on social media. After multiple years of delays, the gaming giant claimed that the game “required more time and investment than we could responsibly commit”. Other reports claim the game was 99% finished and simply needed to finish its bug fixing stage.
Ayaz’ story shows just one side of the horrors of game cancellation. As games take longer and longer to make, actors, writers, developers and more are gambling on a title’s release to be able to work on other projects. Every game that’s cancelled—and annoyingly still kept behind NDA—is another blockade towards new work, and that’s a story that many simply don’t talk about.
