Not a cancellation, but a freeze: the development of the long-suffering game Contraband from the authors of Just Cause and Mad Max is stopped
It looks like the story of Avalanche Studios' ambitious game Contraband is over before it has begun. The game was announced back in 2021 and funded by Xbox Game Studios, but in July its trailer was removed from the Xbox channel allegedly due to the expiration of the music licence.
Gamers immediately suspected in this decision the cancellation of the project and this version has now been confirmed.
Here's What We Know
The first about the cancellation of Contraband reported authoritative insider and Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier.
BREAKING: Xbox is cancelling Contraband, announced in 2021 from Avalanche Studios (Just Cause), after four years of radio silence, sources tell Bloomberg News. This news arrives weeks after a mass layoff in which Xbox cancelled several other big titles.
- Jason Schreier(@jasonschreier.bsky.social) August 7, 2025 at 6:56pm
Shortly after Schreier's post, Avalanche Studios representatives confirmed the information, but (perhaps for complacency) stated that the game was not cancelled, but frozen.
Avalanche Studios Group and Xbox Game Studios Publishing have been working together on Contraband for the past few years. Active development has ceased while we evaluate the project's prospects. We are grateful to the community for the excitement we have seen since the announcement. We will announce further plans as soon as possible.
This doesn't change the point - Contraband development has been halted and the chances of it resuming are minimal. This is possible only if another publisher is interested in the project and agrees to finance it. But if we take into account that the public never saw any gameplay footage, and the game was clearly in production hell, it may turn out that there is simply nothing to finance.
P.S. Schreier's post revealed that Hideo Kojima's experimental OD horror game is safe and will not repeat the fate of Contraband.
