According to Video Games Chronicle, Everwild, the long in development hell new game from Rare has been canceled, with a currently unknown amount of employees being let go as part of the massive Layoffs hitting Xbox and Microsoft as a whole today. In total, about 9,000 jobs are expected to be impacted across the company, with King and Zenimax Media being two other areas known to be affected, but plenty more are on the way.
Everwild was originally announced in 2019, but other than an additional trailer in 2020, nothing has been heard on the project in some time. Rumors have indicated that the game has had some issues for a while, with Banjo-Kazooie veteran Greg Mayles taking over as lead on the project, but supposedly, development had started over from scratch. Given that we had heard nothing from it in so long and the decision to cancel it now, we would guess this was still at least a few years away from releasing, even with Phil Spencer promising that progress had been made on the title earlier this year.
Everwild Being Canceled is Not Surprising
In all honesty, out of all the layoffs news today, it doesn’t surprise us too much that the cord was finally pulled on Everwild. Even after a couple of trailers, we didn’t really have any idea what kind of game it would be. Obviously, it had a nature theme, but things just felt off from the game from its first moment being revealed.
So what next for Rare? With Everwild being axed, the studios focus will likely remain on Sea of Thieves for the immediate future. Depending on how many members of the team are being let go, who knows when we could possibly see a new game from the studio.
