Before Arkane Austin made its Prey game, a developer called Human Head Studios created and developed Prey as a first-person shooter centered around a Cherokee named Domasi "Tommy" Tawodi, who ventures on a quest to save his grandfather and his girlfriend after they're taken by an alien spaceship currently in orbit around the Earth. It was released on PC and Xbox 360, and a sequel was in development until the game was cancelled in 2014.
Between 2006 and 2014, the rights for Human Head Studios' Prey went from its 3D Realms, who initially helped publish the game, to a different company called Radar Group, to ZeniMax Media, who modern players will recognize today as a Bethesda and ZeniMax company, and overall a subsidiary of Microsoft and Xbox. It was under ZeniMax, unfortunately, where Prey 2, which had bounced around in development limbo for years, was canceled, and Human Head Studios was officially shuttered and subsumed into Bethesda as Roundhouse Studios in 2019.
Now, more than a decade after Prey 2 was cancelled and a little under a decade since Arkane Austin made its entirely separate but similarly titled Prey, gameplay footage for Human Head Studios' Prey 2 has leaked online.
A post on Reddit includes links for what would have been Prey 2's opening, a gameplay demo that might've appeared at an E3 show, and a couple of earlier development clips of gameplay and combat, all uploaded by a YouTube channel under the name 'David Halsted.'
The footage is incomplete, but it does give fans of the 2006 Prey a sense of what the team was striving for in a sequel, hoping to take the core elements of Human Head's first Prey game and evolve on them.
At the time of Human Head Studios' shuttering, co-founder Chris Rhinehart said, "Sadly, we had to wind down the business of Human Head Studios and close its doors, which was particularly devastating due to the passion and creativity of the team we’d assembled."
The video game industry wasn't in such dire straits in 2019 compared to its current state, so thankfully, at the time, the whole team was able to stay together and were given new jobs at the aforementioned Roundhouse Studios, which was formed under Bethesda as a way to keep Human Head together. Though it only bought them a few more years, since the mass layoffs since then, not to mention the latest round of mass layoffs that saw significant cuts to ZeniMax Online, likely split the team up for good.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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