It was rumored for a long time that Avalanche Studios, the team most known for the Just Cause series (and not Avalanche Software, the studio developing Hogwarts Legacy), was creating an Iron Man game over a decade ago. Now a former member of that team has opened up about that Marvel game and given his thoughts on why it was canceled.
Avalanche Studios Co-Founder Christofer Sundber (who left the company in 2020) spoke about this ill-fated Iron Man game with MinnMax. Sundber said the title was in development for a couple of years and brought down by company politics, an increasing budget, and development time that was shortened by a year. He then said it was a “very messy project that could have been really, really good.”
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Sundber said it was a good game from a development standpoint, but not from a business one for the aforementioned reasons. It was also supposed to have more of a focus on melee combat almost like the Batman: Arkham games while also giving the player the ability to fly off into the sky. All of the promise it had made it hard to see it go, according to Sundber.
“It was painful because so much time and energy had been spent on it and it looked absolutely amazing,” he said. “So that was the toughest part seeing a year and a half or two years of work — really hard work and really fun work, too, that really showed off in the build — just went down the toilet.”
Sundber also followed up on his LinkedIn page about the the interview as a whole and canceled games he spoke about (which includes a PS2-era game based on the Tremors franchise), saying that “life goes on.”
“Lots and lots of nostalgia here, ups and downs, twists and turns and how cancelled games are not a very big deal 14 years later,” he said. “Shit happens. Life goes on.”
The timing of Avalanche’s canceled Iron Man game would have been after Sega’s two critically panned movie tie-in games from 2008 and 2010. These were the last two big Iron Man games until 2020’s Iron Man VR, which developer Camoflaj released for PlayStation VR on PlayStation 4 in 2020.
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Avalanche Studios’ Iron Man title had only previously been rumored. The company said it was working on a comic book game in 2012 and Twitter user supererogatory reported in 2013 that it did revolve Tony Stark, but it wasn’t officially confirmed.
Ben Hanson, MinnMax’s founder, also raised the question to Sundber back in 2014 while at Game Informer. Sundber said the game was canceled, but he couldn’t comment on whether it was an Iron Man game when pressed on it.
