Gregg Mayles, the veteran Rare designer and director, will reportedly depart the studio following yesterday's sweeping cuts of Xbox staff and projects that included the long-in-development Everwild.
Mayles' departure, as reported by VGC, ends an influential career at Rare stretching back more than 35 years, to the studio's origins developing games like Battletoads for NES and through its N64 heyday, during which Mayles helped design characters such as Diddy Kong.
Perhaps best known as the director of N64 classic Banjo-Kazooie, Mayles more recently served as creative director on hit pirate game Sea of Thieves. Over the last four years, however, Mayles has been overseeing Everwild, Rare's long-gestating fantasy follow-up that will now no longer see the light of day.
Everwild's cancellation, now confirmed by Microsoft, comes six years after the game's initial public announcement, and after around a decade of work by Rare on the project overall. Louise O'Connor, who had been serving as the game's producer, will also reportedly leave Rare, after more than two decades.
IGN has contacted Microsoft for comment.
The last Everwild trailer, released in July 2020, carried the following description: "Everwild is a brand new IP from Rare. A unique and unforgettable experience await in a natural and magical world." Back in February this year, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said he had recently visited the studio to catch up on the game's progress. "It’s nice to see the team with Everwild and the progress that they’re making," Spencer said at the time.
But yesterday afternoon, Xbox made Everwild's cancellation official via a company-wide email from Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty. The Initiative's Perfect Dark reboot has also been cancelled, as well as other unannounced projects such as a new MMO from The Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios.
"We have made the decision to stop development of Perfect Dark and Everwild as well as wind down several unannounced projects across our portfolio," Booty wrote.
"As part of this, we are closing one of our studios, The Initiative. These decisions, along with other changes across our teams, reflect a broader effort to adjust priorities and focus resources to set up our teams for greater success within a changing industry landscape.
"We did not make these choices lightly, as each project and team represent years of effort, imagination, and commitment."
Image credit: YouTube.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
