Struggling to Cut Costs, Microsoft Continues Shutting Down and Cancelling Stuff This Month

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 08, 2025

There are August layoffs at Microsoft. New casualty:

A few hours ago, Vikki Blake (citing Stephen Totilo), revealed yet another cancellation by Microsoft. "Microsoft has stopped active development on one of its most enigmatic upcoming Xbox and PC games," to quote Totilo, "the externally developed Contraband, Game File has learned. Sweden-based Avalanche Studios (Just Cause) had been developing the game, with Microsoft’s Xbox team publishing."

Another site says "Xbox cancels a game it has not shown off in over four years". Quoting Tomas Franzese: "Xbox has canceled its plans to publish Contraband, a co-op game that was in development at Just Cause and Rage 2 developer Avalanche Studios for Xbox Series X. Xbox Game Studios had not discussed the game since its reveal in 2021. The news of its cancellation comes over a tumultuous July for Xbox. Microsoft's layoffs heavily impacted Xbox, resulting in the cancellation of other previously announced games, like Perfect Dark and Everwild."

Derek Strickland explains it is "new game that was in development at Avalanche Studios and announced four years ago at E3 2021."

Further down: "UPDATE: Avalanche has delivered a statement, confirming that development on Contraband has stopped."

Here are more reports [1, 2].

To those paying close attention this oughtn't come as a total shock, knowing that Microsoft's debt is out of control (the fictional share price cannot compensate for this, but it helps Microsoft pays its staff with money that does not exist) and Microsoft is laying off like crazy this year (considerable net job losses). The "assets" of the company are also fictional.

XBox isn't profitable. Many things at Microsoft are not.

Expect more cuts. █