Rare's fantasy title Everwild has also been cancelled. Although announced in 2019, the game had a troubled development history, reportedly restarting from scratch in 2021 and being in development for approximately 10 years. Rare itself will not be closed.

Microsoft has reportedly cancelled Everwild, an in-development game from UK-based Sea of Thieves developer Rare, and potentially other projects amid a round of layoffs that will see the company lose upwards of 9000 employees.

Microsoft is reducing its global workforce by nearly 4%. Gaming is among the departments affected, and as a result, Xbox has abandoned games like Everwild and Perfect Dark.

The news was initially confirmed in a statement signed by Brenda Romero and posted on X. “Last night, we learned that our publisher has canceled funding for our game along with several other unannounced projects at other studios,

John Romero's Romero Games just released a statement saying that the project the studio has been working on has been defunded. Microsoft's funding of the project was unknown till now, but the timing suggests that Romero Games was part of the massive cuts that the company made yesterday.