Microsoft Corp’s Xbox gaming unit is cancelling Contraband, a multiplayer video game that was in development for years at the Swedish company Avalanche Studios Group.
"Active development has now stopped while we evaluate the project’s future,” Avalanche said Thursday in a statement on its website. "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.”
Xbox has said little about Contraband since the game was announced in 2021 with a vague teaser. It was described on the company’s website as "a co-op smuggler’s paradise set in the fictional world of 1970s Bayan”. Avalanche is best known for the Just Cause series, in which players parachute around a massive open world.
The cancellation follows hundreds of job cuts at Xbox last month, as well as the axing of major titles that had been in development for years, including Perfect Dark, Everwild and an online game code-named Blackbird. – Bloomberg
