Xbox Game Studios has reportedly canceled Contraband, the next game from Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios, following four years of silence from both studios regarding the game.
That's according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who reported the cancellation on Bluesky. Given that we haven't heard anything about Contraband for four years, its cancellation is perhaps unsurprising, but it's a shame nonetheless.
Of course, we didn't know that much about Contraband to begin with. When it was announced in 2021, Avalanche said the game, which was to be a "co-op smuggler's paradise", would be the studio's "most ambitious and spectacular game to date", but beyond that, not much was revealed about the project.
Avalanche did say that the game would utilize Just Cause's Apex Engine, and as far as we knew, the game would be an Xbox Series X|S exclusive, although given Xbox's recent moves towards platform agnosticism, that may not have been the case for long.
Contraband's cancellation comes after a massive wave of Microsoft layoffs that saw around 9,000 company employees lose their jobs, as well as high-profile game and studio shutdowns under the Xbox brand.
These included the cancellation of Rare's Everwild, as well as the shuttering...
