10 Video Games Cancelled Before Their Time
2. Sleeping Dogs 2
Yet another case of a slam dunk cult favourite game bizarrely not leading to a sequel when the interest was clearly rife is Sleeping Dogs.
Like so many other games on this list, it was rumoured that Sleeping Dogs 2 was already in development when it got the axe. Given the original game had a rich open world, a compelling story, stellar combat, and truly memorable characters, it seemed like a sequel was a sure thing. All that said, part of the reason for this was due to the sales of the first game falling short of the publisher’s expectations. According to SVG, Square Enix believed that greenlighting Sleeping Dogs 2 wasn’t financially viable due to their position in 2013. Even though Hitman: Absolution and the Tomb Raider reboot were a hit, the company was still losing money.
Like, a lot of money. Specifically $61.08 million dollars. An amount that led to the resignation of its CEO.
As a result the publisher leant back into its more reliable properties, Tomb Raider and Hitman. There was an effort to revive Sleeping Dogs 2 in the form of the free-to-play mobile game Triad Wars, the game wasn’t terribly well received and was shut down just a year after its beta launched in 2015.