Microsoft Stops Active Development On Just Cause Studio’s Next Game Contraband

“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.”

There hasn’t been any news or gameplay footage of the title since it was revealed in a cinematic trailer during E3 2021. The description on its announcement video reads, “Avalanche Games and Xbox Studios are teaming up to bring you this first look at a new co-op open world heist game called Contraband.”

Avalanche Studios is a Swedish game developer and publisher known for the Just Cause games, theHunter series, Renegade Ops, and Mad Max (2015). The studio hasn’t released a game it developed since Rage 2 in 2019, which was co-created with Bethesda Softworks. Contraband was their only announced title in development. In June 2024, the company closed its Montreal and New York offices, laying off 50 employees in the process.

The fact that we haven’t seen gameplay or heard any news four years after the announcement seems to indicate that the game experienced troubled development, something that’s become a bit of a trend under Microsoft-published titles. Xbox Games recently cancelled numerous projects after a massive wave of layoffs throughout the wider company led to 500 employees being let go in its gaming division. Some of the axed games include Rare’s Everwild, The Initiative’s Perfect Dark reboot (The Initiative was also shut down), and an MMORPG from Zenimax Online Studios code-named Blackbird. This ties into a longstanding trend with Microsoft publishing, which includes the cancellations of games like Scalebound, reported development issues with the Halo series, and more.