Earlier this year, reports surfaced suggesting that Just Cause 5 was canceled midway through development, putting a final nail in the coffin for the open-world action series. In a recent post on social media, Avalanche Studios’ founder, Christofer Sundberg, revealed that the current makeup of the company would prevent Just Cause 5 from ever resurfacing.
In his words, even the reappearance of Just Cause 5 wouldn’t be enough to ‘save’ Avalanche.
We Might Never See Another Just Cause Game
Just Cause debuted in 2006, emerging as an open-world action title like never before. It was an enormous game that pushed the PlayStation 2 and Xbox to unforeseen limits, offering players a massive world to trek through while undertaking gun-blazing missions and death-defying stunts.
It was expanded on with a second, third, and fourth (and final) release, but the latter title proved to be the killing point for the franchise, which is something that Christofer Sundberg, founder of Avalanche Studios, shouldered some of the blame for:
The problems with JC4 was partly me (unwillingly) moving away from creative leadership to more corporate crap, publisher problems, team composition and roles and more. Sad, because looking at JC4 now, it shows SO much promise.
Sundberg was speaking to his followers about the recent topic of Contraband. Images of the canceled game surfaced recently online, prompting Sundberg to address his relation to the project:
Me and my team pitched Contraband back in 2017 to MSFT (and signed it). It’s changed quite a lot since then obviously, but it would have been fantastic to see it being released one day somehow. #JC5 would be a no-go since extremely few from the original team are there still.
In the comments under his post, Sundberg became critical of Avalanche’s current operating model:
I doubt it. They need to find the fire again, take risks, piss people off and make games the rest said was impossible. I started Avalanche to break the mold, not to fit into one.
Do you wish we’d seen another Just Cause game? Let me know what you’re thinking on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that GTA won’t leave the United States
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
A great series, killed out of their own incompetence. Now they have nothing left.