Xbox Stops Development on Contraband, Four Years After Initial E3 Announcement

Xbox has stopped development of Contrabrand to "evaluate the project's future," with a Bloomberg report saying the game is canceled entirely four years after its initial E3 announcement.

Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier first broke the news on Bluesky today, saying that "Xbox is canceling Contraband, announced in 2021 from Avalanche Studios (Just Cause), after four years of radio silence, sources tell Bloomberg News."

This was followed by an official confirmation from Avalanche on its website, which reads as follows:

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 fro mthe community since we announced and will give an update on what's next as soon as we can.

Contraband was originally announced for Xbox and PC at E3 2021 with a teaser trailer. At the time, we knew it would be set in a 1970s smuggler's paradise called Bayan, but we didn't see any gameplay. Since then, we've seen nothing further of the game, nor heard any progress on its development. However, we did report that in 2022, management and employees clashed over a controversial hire and a lack of subsequent communication, a dispute that later inspired the studio to form an official union club and pressure the company toward signing a collective bargaining agreement.

Xbox, meanwhile, has been canceling projects left and right amid a mass layoff last month that saw 9,100 jobs eliminated Microsoft-wide, including hundreds in gaming. In the aftermath, we learned that games including Everwild and Perfect Dark had been canceled.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.