Mysterious Jurassic Park brand silence just disrupted some fun Jurassic gaming news
And delayed some DLC, too.
On Tuesday, during Sony PayStation’s State of Play, one of the most-watched gaming showcases of the year, viewers got a look at a new game in the old Stuntman franchise.
Stuntman: Hollywood was a big surprise. It’s the first new game in the series since 2007 and, in a twist, it features real, recognizable shows and movies.
The trailer showed how players will be able to perform stunts based on Miami Vice, Knight Rider, Back to the Future, Fast & Furious and Death Race.
All those teased franchises are part of Universal Pictures and NBCUniversal TV.
There’s another Universal tie-in that the Stuntman’s developer and publisher, Saber Interactive, wanted to show, but couldn’t: Jurassic Park.
It’s not because they’re skipping it.
The iconic dinosaur series will also be featured in Stuntman: Hollywood, Saber CEO Matt Karch tells Game File.
So why wasn’t it in the game’s first promotional video?
Saber was not allowed to include it, Karch said, due to an unexpected months-long period of silence around Jurassic Park-related announcements that extended well beyond Saber’s game.
While the issue appears to have just been resolved, it was not done so in time to cut a new Stuntman trailer.
Karch said he was never told by Universal just what the problem was. “But I have since been informed that it's resolved,” he said.
It’s unclear what the hang-up was. A rights issue? A copyright concern? A rep for Universal did not reply to a request for comment by press time. (Jurassic Park began as a 1990 novel by the late Michael Crichton, who sold the film and TV rights to Universal. )
Fans began noticing some strangeness around all things Jurassic Park in mid-March as usually-active social media channels tied to the ongoing film series went quiet.
Those fans are now celebrating signs earlier this week that whatever was going on seems to be in the past.
On June 2, the official X/Twitter account for Jurassic World posted, without explanation, “We’re back in business.”
The account had last posted on March 17.
A Jurassic-focused YouTuber Swrve was ebullient. On his channel, he noted: “Over the course of the last 76 Days, a strange never-before-seen anomaly with the Jurassic IP has been ongoing where it remained silent without a peep from all of their social channels. Today, that just ended!”
Whatever the reason for the silence, the multi-month dino crisis also impacted another game: Frontier Development’s late-2025 strategy park-builder Jurassic World Evolution 3.
Frontier had been releasing new dinosaurs as free monthly downloadable content for the game. In February, they added the Cryolophosaurus. On March 16, they added the Amargasaurus.
But no dinosaur was added in April. On May 1, a Frontier rep posted to the studio’s Discord that “due to reasons outside of our control, we were unable to release April’s free species, despite our best efforts.”
On May 26th, the rep apologized again, this time for not yet being able to release the late April dinosaur nor the planned May species “due to ongoing reasons outside of our control.”
A day later, the rep delivered good news: “We are now able to confirm that we will be returning to our planned schedule of content over the coming months.” That same day, the game’s social media account ran an in-character apology for “the recent loss of communications” and said that the Dracorex and Liopleurodon dinosaur species would be added to the game on June 1.
While we’re discussing Jurassic Park games…
As for Saber, the company has more Jurassic Park-related video games in the works, beyond a slice of Stuntman: Hollywood. Back in December 2023, at The Game Awards, the company announced the development of the first-person game Jurassic Park: Survival.
Little has been heard about it since.
“Happy to say JP Survival is very much under active development and is looking very solid,” Karch told Game File, when I opportunistically asked.
Both it and the new Stuntman, he stressed, are “looking good.”
I'd wager some arguing about just what Jurassic is now
I mean, it's a relatively great idea surrounded by a sea of terrible ones in the form of way too many movies?