Cancelled Xbox Game Contraband Found Hidden Inside a Fishing Game
A YouTuber found an entire test world for the cancelled Xbox game Contraband sitting inside a public beta build for Avalanche's fishing game.
What got found
Luke JC uncovered it inside a public Steam beta for Call of the Wild: The Angler, dated February 18, 2022, four years before Contraband died. Both games run on Avalanche's Apex Engine, and the fishing game's beta apparently still ships with Contraband's test area attached: a temple-like Ground Strike zone, a floating settlement, a residential town with markets, caves, warehouses, and mission locations. Some rooms are dressed enough to look finished, neon-lit bars, beer dispensers, working bathrooms. Vehicles are drivable, boats and a helicopter included.
The game itself
Contraband got one CGI trailer at the 2021 Xbox and Bethesda Showcase and nothing else public for four years. It was a co-op smuggling game set in a fictional 1970s country called Bayan, slated as an Xbox Series X|S and Game Pass day one release. Development stopped in August 2025 during Microsoft's broader Xbox layoffs, and the project was formally cancelled shortly after. Avalanche's Liverpool studio, the one building it, closed weeks later.
What's left of Avalanche
Avalanche is an independent Swedish developer, not Xbox-owned, and it's still down to two offices. New York and Montreal closed in June 2024, 50 people, 9% of the workforce, unrelated to Contraband. Liverpool followed after the cancellation. What's left is Stockholm and Malmö, roughly 400 people, down from five studios at its peak. The last game Avalanche actually shipped was Rage 2 in 2019.
Just Cause isn't coming from here either
Square Enix owns the Just Cause IP, not Avalanche. A fifth entry was reportedly in development at a different studio, Sumo Digital, from 2021 to 2023, based on a former employee's own résumé rather than any official announcement. That project was also quietly cancelled. No Just Cause game is confirmed to be in active development anywhere right now.
