You’ll never get to play it, but at least now you can see what you’re missing. Over an hour of development footage from a canceled Escape From New York game adaptation has leaked online, giving fans a bittersweet glimpse of the multiplayer shooter that Slipgate Ironworks was building before Embracer Group’s brutal restructuring killed the project in January 2024.
The leaked material spans 17 separate videos showcasing development maps, character animations, weapons, playable characters with unique skills, and most importantly, over 15 minutes of actual gameplay. It’s a rare opportunity to see inside a canceled project and understand what the team was trying to create before the plug got pulled.
What the Footage Reveals
Based on the leaked videos, Escape From New York was shaping up as a co-op multiplayer title built in Unreal Engine 5. Players would have controlled at least three different characters, each with unique abilities required to navigate the game’s various levels. Think asymmetric co-op where teamwork and character-specific skills matter more than just shooting everything that moves.
The gameplay footage shows what appears to be a mission-based structure with players working together to overcome obstacles and enemies. The visual style stays faithful to John Carpenter’s 1981 dystopian classic, capturing the gritty, decaying atmosphere of Manhattan transformed into a maximum security prison.
Development maps reveal the team was building out multiple environments across the prison city. Character animations look surprisingly polished for a canceled project, suggesting the game had progressed further than you might expect. Weapon systems appear functional with different firearms and combat mechanics in place.
The Embracer Massacre
To understand why this game never made it to release, you need to know about Embracer Group’s catastrophic restructuring period. Between 2023 and 2025, Embracer laid off approximately 7,800 employees – more than half their total workforce. They shut down dozens of studios and canceled nearly 80 games that were actively in development.
Slipgate Ironworks and sister studio 3D Realms got hit particularly hard in December 2023 and January 2024, with at least 50% of their combined staff let go. According to a confirmed former Slipgate employee who spoke to 80 Level in March 2024, Escape From New York was canceled in January 2024 due to “significant issues regarding the development process” and the mass layoffs hammering Embracer at the time.
The timing was brutal. The game had clearly progressed beyond early prototyping into actual production with working systems, character models, and gameplay mechanics. Development teams don’t build 15 minutes of playable content overnight. This represented months or years of work from talented developers who suddenly found themselves jobless as Embracer desperately tried to stop the financial bleeding.
What Went Wrong at Embracer
Embracer’s collapse wasn’t caused by one mistake but a perfect storm of bad decisions. The company went on an acquisition spree between 2019 and 2022, buying up studios and IP at a breakneck pace. At one point they had over 200 games in development across their portfolio. That’s not sustainable without massive external funding or several hit releases generating revenue.
A $2 billion investment deal with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund fell through in May 2023, leaving Embracer overextended and cash-strapped. The company was forced into brutal restructuring mode, slashing anything that wasn’t generating immediate profit or close to completion. Projects like Escape From New York became expendable casualties.
Major studios that worked for decades shut down entirely. Volition, creators of Saints Row, closed in August 2023. Free Radical Design, reviving TimeSplitters, shuttered in December 2023. Piranha Bytes, the German team behind Gothic and ELEX, quietly ceased operations. These weren’t struggling studios – they were capable developers working on potentially successful games that simply got caught in Embracer’s financial disaster.
The John Carpenter Connection
Escape From New York holds a special place in sci-fi cinema history. John Carpenter’s 1981 film starring Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken became an instant cult classic with its dystopian vision of Manhattan Island converted into a walled prison. The premise was simple but compelling – infiltrate the prison to rescue the President of the United States within 24 hours or die trying.
Video game adaptations of the franchise have had mixed results over the years. A board game released in 2022 captured the film’s tension and atmosphere reasonably well. Various attempts at digital adaptations have come and gone with limited success. The property has all the elements you’d want for a great co-op game – a hostile environment, memorable characters, desperate survival scenarios, and built-in time pressure.
Slipgate Ironworks seemed to understand what made the source material work. The leaked footage shows they weren’t just slapping the Escape From New York name on a generic shooter. There was genuine effort to capture the film’s tone and translate it into compelling gameplay mechanics. That’s what makes the cancellation so frustrating – this looked like it could have been the game the franchise deserved.
Slipgate’s Legacy
Slipgate Ironworks was founded in 2010 and built a reputation working on retro-inspired first-person shooters. They developed Graven and Wrath: Aeon of Ruin, both channeling classic 90s shooter vibes with modern polish. The studio clearly had the technical chops to handle action-focused projects.
In August 2021, Saber Interactive acquired Slipgate as part of Embracer Group’s buying spree. For a while, things seemed stable. The team worked on multiple projects including Tempest Rising, a real-time strategy game, and Core Decay, a retro FPS. Then Embracer’s restructuring hit and half the staff disappeared overnight.
The studios were eventually sold to Beacon Interactive, a new company from Saber co-founder Matthew Karch, in March 2024. By then, Escape From New York and other projects were already dead. The developers who survived the layoffs moved on to other work. The institutional knowledge and team chemistry that was building that game scattered to the winds.
Why These Leaks Matter
Game development is notoriously secretive. Studios rarely show unfinished work, and canceled projects usually vanish completely. Developers sign NDAs preventing them from discussing what they built. Publishers don’t want to draw attention to failures. The result is that hundreds of canceled games disappear without a trace, along with all the creative work that went into them.
That’s what makes this Escape From New York leak valuable from a preservation and education perspective. Future developers can study what worked and what didn’t. Gamers get to see the messy middle stage of game development that normally stays hidden. It humanizes the development process and highlights how much work goes into games that never reach players.
The footage also serves as documentation of what was lost in Embracer’s collapse. These weren’t just abstract numbers on a spreadsheet. Real people built these systems, modeled these characters, and programmed these mechanics. Every canceled game represents careers disrupted and creative visions abandoned. Having tangible evidence of what existed makes that loss more concrete and hopefully more memorable for the industry.
Could It Ever Be Revived?
The obvious question is whether Escape From New York could come back in some form. The IP rights situation is complicated since the game was being developed under Embracer but the movie franchise has its own separate rights holders. Who owns the work-in-progress game assets and code depends on what agreements were in place.
Even if the rights could be sorted out, reviving a canceled project is extremely difficult. The development team has disbanded. The budget that was allocated is gone. Any publisher picking it up would need to either rebuild from scratch or try to piece together what exists with new developers who weren’t involved originally. Neither option is appealing financially.
There’s also the market timing issue. The game was designed for 2024-2025 release on current generation hardware. If it somehow got revived now, it would be competing with whatever games are trending in 2026 or later. The market moves fast, and what seemed like a good idea in 2023 might not resonate the same way years later.
Most likely, this footage is the closest we’ll ever get to experiencing Slipgate’s vision for Escape From New York. It’ll exist as one of those “what could have been” stories that gaming history is filled with – interesting, tragic, and ultimately unplayable.
FAQs
What was Escape From New York game about?
The canceled Escape From New York game was a co-op multiplayer shooter developed by Slipgate Ironworks using Unreal Engine 5. Based on leaked footage, it featured at least three playable characters with unique abilities working together to complete missions in the dystopian prison city from John Carpenter’s 1981 film.
Why was Escape From New York game canceled?
The game was canceled in January 2024 as part of Embracer Group’s massive restructuring. Embracer laid off approximately 50% of Slipgate Ironworks staff and canceled nearly 80 games across their portfolio after a $2 billion Saudi investment deal fell through, leaving the company financially overextended.
How much footage leaked from the canceled game?
Over an hour of work-in-progress footage appeared online spread across 17 videos. The leak includes development maps, character animations, weapons, playable characters with unique skills, and over 15 minutes of actual gameplay demonstrating the co-op mechanics.
Who developed the Escape From New York game?
Slipgate Ironworks, a studio known for retro-inspired first-person shooters like Wrath: Aeon of Ruin and Graven, was developing the game. The studio was part of Embracer Group at the time of cancellation and is now owned by Beacon Interactive.
When was the game canceled?
Escape From New York was officially canceled in January 2024 according to a confirmed former Slipgate employee. The cancellation came during Embracer Group’s December 2023 and January 2024 layoff wave that eliminated at least half of Slipgate Ironworks and 3D Realms staff.
Could the Escape From New York game be revived?
Revival is extremely unlikely. The development team has disbanded, the budget is gone, and the rights situation is complicated. Even if a publisher wanted to pick it up, they would need to either rebuild from scratch or work with new developers unfamiliar with the original vision, neither of which is financially appealing.
Where can I watch the leaked footage?
The leaked videos are circulating online on various platforms. 80 Level originally reported on the leak and provided links to the footage. A simple search for “Escape From New York canceled game footage” should help you locate the videos.
What other games did Embracer cancel?
Embracer canceled nearly 80 games during their 2023-2025 restructuring period. Other notable casualties include a new TimeSplitters being developed by Free Radical Design and various projects from Volition, Piranha Bytes, and dozens of other studios that were shut down entirely.
A Cautionary Tale
The Escape From New York leak represents more than just one canceled game. It’s a cautionary tale about corporate mismanagement destroying creative work and disrupting thousands of careers. Embracer’s aggressive expansion without sustainable business fundamentals created a house of cards that inevitably collapsed, taking dozens of studios and hundreds of projects down with it.
For the developers who poured their skills and passion into this project, seeing it leak online must be bittersweet. On one hand, their work finally gets some recognition instead of disappearing completely. On the other hand, it’s a reminder of wasted effort and lost opportunities. They built something that looked genuinely interesting and never got the chance to finish it.
The gaming industry has a preservation problem. Too many games get canceled and vanish without documentation. Too many talented developers lose their jobs when executives make bad business decisions. Too many creative visions die in the pursuit of quarterly profits. Leaks like this one at least ensure that some small record exists of what was lost.
If nothing else, maybe this serves as a reminder that behind every canceled game announcement, there are real people who dedicated months or years of their lives to something that will never see the light of day. The Escape From New York footage is a monument to their work and a warning about what happens when corporate ambition exceeds financial reality.