Fable’s Sniper Elite Battle Royale Spin-off Scrapped Following Tencent Financing Withdrawal

Image courtesy of Stand Up Tendencies.

Stand Up Tendencies has reportedly discontinued a battle royale offshoot for its Sniper Elite series.

According to Insider Gaming, the offshoot, codenamed ‘Mission Archipelago,’ was terminated following Tencent’s decision to halt funding. The initiative was initially revealed in August amid alpha testing and was anticipated to be a significant addition to the franchise’s multiplayer offerings.

Based on Insider Gaming, Stand Up representatives indicated that the project was canceled in response to the poor launch of Concord, which led Tencent to reconsider whether to proceed with Archipelago.

The publication stated that developers working on the title have been reassigned to other projects and emphasized that the cancellation did not lead to any layoffs.

When approached by Game Developer, Stand Up opted not to comment on the situation.

During a March earnings call, Tencent CSO James Mitchell stated that the company aimed to “concentrate on fewer larger-budget games.” Live-service titles often demand significant investment and do not always achieve success, evidenced by Tencent’s own decision to discontinue its year-old multiplayer shooter Synced earlier this year.

In the past year, several companies have terminated their live-service games that had been operational for at least a year, or were still in mid-development. The reasons varied: Behaviour Interactive’s Project T was canceled because development wasn’t progressing well, while Synced was terminated as its player base seemed insufficient. Conversely, Naughty Dog’s multiplayer Last of Us game was shelved when the studio determined it was becoming too ambitious of a project.

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