It appears yet another previously announced game has got the chop by Microsoft with Jason Schreier from Bloomberg reporting that Avalanche Studio’s Contraband has been cancelled.
That has just been confirmed by Avalanche, although they say development has stopped whilw they “evaluate” the project’s future.
Announced during the 2021 Microsoft and Bethesda Showcase with a CGI trailer for the game and very little else. The official version of the reveal trailer has been removed for YouTube, but here’s a copy.
“Contraband is our most ambitious game yet and working closely together with Xbox Games Studios has been a great experience,” said Omar Shakir, Game Director at Avalanche Studios at the to,e. “We can’t wait to share more about the game and the world of Bayan.”
“We’re incredibly excited to work together with a partner such as Xbox Game Studios and look forward to laying the foundation for a long-standing partnership,” added Pim Holfve, CEO at Avalanche Studios Group. “With Contraband, we’re taking everything we’ve learned from 18 years of being in the forefront of open world games as well as bringing the knowledge from running successful live game services focusing on our player communities.”
Some leaks did hit the internet over the past few years, it was said to be a mix of PayDay, Battlefield Hardline, Mad Max, and Dukes of Hazard. It was going to be a four and eight player co-op and seemed to pit a team of cops against a team of robbers who are trying to pull off a heist.
A QA tester posted this on YouTube
“I was one of the first employed QA Testers to experience the game and even in the early stages it was hella fun. As of my last experience the vehicles were fully customizable. You could slap on giant off road tires on what looked like a typical 60s muscle car. You also could get covered in mud and even stuck. Though my personal favourite was the land rover style vehicle. It could go anywhere, really fast and could boost plus at the time had a winch. Basically take all the awesome vehicle driving and customization in Mad Max and put it in the game for the vehicle missions.”
“The island design will be super clean. There was talk about licensed music but they already had a lot of music that you would expect to hear in the 70s in south east asia. The main story had four female protagonists and was the main selling point of the game at the time. So I can confirm that it will be four player. Not sure about the eight player but we did have that as an option, we just didn’t have enough people to test it out. When I mean I was one of the first testers, I’m not joking, the team was only four people, a QA Lead, Test Engineer and two testers.”
