A new report indicates that 2K might be working on a new BioShock game. The report comes from a lengthy Kotaku article about the making of Mafia III and the state of the game’s development team post-release. It’s an interesting read in and of itself, but the really fascinating tidbit comes from a Hangar 13 developer, who revealed that the team was working next door to a top-secret project that the developer believes is a new BioShock game.

That’s far from an official confirmation, but some of the people who spoke about the project suggested that the team working on it is really just trying to identify what the “core” of the game is. The team is also reportedly trying to avoid having too many people working on the next BioShock before it knows what it’s trying to accomplish. That being the case, it’s highly unlikely we’ll see any information about this game in the near future if it even turns into a game at all.

Still, it’s a bit surprising to hear that 2K is even working on something in the BioShock family. Yeah, the series was quite popular, but the circumstances of Irrational Games’ shutdown not long after the release of BioShock Infinite could have been taken to mean that 2K had decided that the BioShock franchise wasn’t worth the trouble.

That being the case, maybe it’s not too crazy to harbor some fear regarding what the 2K team is able to do with the BioShock franchise. We have no doubt that there are talented people working on the project, but given how much of a passion project BioShock was for Ken Levine and his team, it’s somewhat odd to think that someone else might work on a BioShock game that even closely resembles the original titles.