Key Takeaways
- Rebellion’s Sniper Elite battle royale game, “Project Archipelago,” has reportedly been canceled due to loss of funding from Tencent.
- The cancellation was not due to development issues but reportedly stemmed from Tencent’s decision after the failure of another project.
- The cancellation did not impact Rebellion’s staff, as they continue to work on other titles, including Sniper Elite: Resistance.
A live service battle royale game based on developer Rebellion Developments’ Sniper Elite series has reportedly been canceled. The game was originally announced in August 2024 as a multiplayer-focused spin-off of the Sniper Elite titles.
Once regarded as a lower-budget “copycat” series that latched onto the trend of World War 2-based games, Sniper Elite first debuted in 2005, telling the fictionalized story of an American sniper operating behind Nazi lines. Later Sniper Elite titles visited other theaters of the war and adopted additional mechanics to critical and popular acclaim and cementing the franchise’s place in the upper tiers of the best stealth shooter games. The Sniper Elite series also became famous for its particular focus on sniping, with the implementation of gruesome “X-ray” kills that show bullets entering the heads, torsos, limbs, and even private parts of enemies, depending on where the player aims. The series has even managed its own horror-based spin-off in the form of the Zombie Army games, pitting expert marksmen against undead hordes.
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Unfortunately for Rebellion, its plan to expand the series into the persistent multiplayer space with a game codenamed “Project Archipelago” appears to have been canceled. According to a report by Insider Gaming, Project Archipelago is no longer moving forward, despite its announcement being less than four months old. The game was also known as “Sniper Island” and intended to be a multiplayer Sniper Elite Battle Royale title pitting teams of players against each other.
Developer Rebellion Reportedly Cancels Sniper Elite Battle Royale Game
According to the report, the reason behind the cancelation of Project Archipelago isn’t related to development troubles, but rather to a loss of funding from Tencent, which was bankrolling the project. In meetings, Rebellion staff implied that the fate of Concord, the Sony-published multiplayer hero shooter, influenced Tencent’s decision to pull funding from Project Archipelago. Concord was a major project for PlayStation Studios, but was considered a failure soon after it debuted. The game was shut down less than two weeks after launching, and its developer, Firewalk Studios, was shuttered at the end of October 2024.
While the apparent loss of Project Archipelago is unfortunate, it does not appear to have affected current staff at Rebellion Developments. The studio has other titles in development, including the next mainline single-player title in the Sniper Elite series. Sniper Elite: Resistance launches in January 2025 for Xbox and PlayStation consoles and PC, and promises to take the series to France in World War 2, starring a new protagonist that works with the French Resistance against the Nazi occupation.
Rebellion Developments
- Date Founded
- December 4, 1992
- Headquarters
- Oxford, United Kingdom
- CEO
- Jason Kingsley