Upcoming Avalanche Game ‘Contraband’ Cancelled

Avalanche, the studio best known for the Just Cause series and, most recently, the divisive Rage 2 from 2019, have confirmed that their upcoming game ‘Contraband’ has had its development cease. This was revealed all the way back in 2021 with a cinematic trailer showcasing an open world related to smuggling. Not much was shown off in this initial reveal and, since then, there’s been even less information on the game.

Its not too much of a surprise, then, that Avalanche confirmed that development would not continue on the game with the following announcement on their website:

“Over the past several years, Avalanche Studios Group and Xbox Game Studios Publishing have collaborated on Contraband. Active development has now stopped while we evaluate the project’s future. We’re thankful for the excitement we’ve seen from the community since we announced and will give an update on what’s next as soon as we can.”

With there being no additional details on the game coming out in over four years, many people in the community expected this announcement to come sooner or later. This theory was basically confirmed when the initial reveal trailer was delisted from YouTube within the last year.

Image by Avalanche Studios

Fans have speculated that this cancellation may be the result of Microsoft’s massive job cuts at the start of this year- where 9000 people were laid off. Since there has been almost nothing revealed between the reveal and this point, however, it was likely that the project was in quite a precarious position anyway.

With Avalanche not releasing a game since the rather disappointing Rage 2 in 2019 and their most recent effort being cancelled altogether, the future of the studio is in question. Their next game is therefore at least another few years off at the earliest. However, Xbox has confirmed that they are not expected to make any further job cuts or studio closures according to reporting from Game File.