Avalanche Studios Starts New Live Service Project Using Unreal Engine 5 After Canceling Contraband And Closing Regional Offices
Avalanche Studios, the creative team behind the Just Cause series, have begun production on an unknown live service game. Recruitment posts for some senior positions, such as a technical director and a gameplay systems programmer, were posted to professional networking site LinkedIn earlier this week. These posts clearly call for experience with
"building and supporting live service systems"showing the developer has no intention of abandoning its ongoing multiplayer business.
The news of the project comes following a difficult few years for the studio. Avalanche spent several years working on Contraband, a live service co op heist game developed in partnership with Xbox Game Studios, but was forced to cancel it as the software giant had planned on a live service component, leading to an instant wave of layoffs and the permanent closure of one of the developer's regional offices.
With the breakdown of that partnership, there was uncertainty surrounding the future of the studio, but new job postings confirm that Avalanche intends to continue working within the multiplayer space, merely in a different capacity than what Contraband was built towards, opting instead to reconfigure its development approach for a new project under a different technical setup.
More telling than any aspect of the development phase is Avalanche Studios' decision to move from the in house Apex Engine it has previously developed its games with, over to Unreal Engine 5. It would appear that difficulties with the bespoke toolset were a factor in the prolonged, and eventual failure of, Contraband's development, and by utilizing Unreal Engine 5 it will likely give Avalanche studios a more standard, efficient way to produce games while trying to find its place in the increasingly competitive live service market.
