Rare’s long-in-development game Everwild is no more, according to a report from Video Games Chronicle, citing sources at the studio. The enigmatic open-world adventure has been canceled, nearly six years after it was first revealed and after a decade of some form of development on Everwild.
News of Everwild’s cancellation arrives amid more layoffs at Microsoft; the company is reportedly slashing nearly 9,000 jobs as part of new cuts at Microsoft. On Wednesday, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said in a note to employees, published by Windows Central, that the Xbox division is being impacted: “To position Gaming for enduring success and allow us to focus on strategic growth areas, we will end or decrease work in certain areas of the business and follow Microsoft’s lead in removing layers of management to increase agility and effectiveness,” Spencer said.
Rare first unveiled Everwild in November 2019, but outside of a lush trailer, didn’t say much about how the follow-up to Sea of Thieves would play or what its scope was.
The following year, Rare showed off another trailer for Everwild, but again offered little detail about its mechanics or play style. At the time, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty said that Everwild would give players “they can just lose themselves in.”
“You know, a lot of nature feels magical. So the notion of, ‘What does it mean to nurture a world? What does it mean to be in nature?’” Booty told Polygon. “Part of the reason we haven’t talked a lot about Everwild is because we’re still feeling a lot of these things out. We’re still playing around with gameplay ideas.”
Rare went dark on Everwild in the following years, and the game was reportedly rebooted in 2021. VGC reported at the time that Rare had undertaken “a complete overhaul of the game’s design and direction” following the departure of its previous creative director, Simon Woodroffe.
Earlier this year, Spencer said in a podcast interview that Xbox Game Studios had the luxury of affording teams like Rare to get projects like Everwild right, thanks to Xbox’s strong publishing slate. But it appears that Microsoft has run out of patience and that Rare has run out of time, at least when it comes to Everwild.
Polygon has reached out to Microsoft for comment on Everwild’s cancellation and what it means for Rare, and will update when the company responds.
