Halo Studios reportedly cancels multiplayer project Ekur, a large-scale Spartans-vs-Elites battle game

Halo Studios has reportedly cancelled Project Ekur, a multiplayer game in development at Certain Affinity. The cancellation was first reported by Halo YouTuber Rebs Gaming, citing multiple Halo Studios employees, and was independently confirmed by Windows Central's Jez Corden, who called the information "100 percent true."

Project Ekur had an unusual origin: it grew out of Tatanka, an Unreal Engine battle royale experiment that was itself scrapped. Ekur kept Tatanka's map, added Halo Infinite's Slipspace map, and pivoted to a "super big team battle" concept — with Halo 5's Warzone mode as a key touchstone. The prototype passed a green-light review in September 2023, and the project eventually featured playable Spartans and Elites with full character customisation. An extraction shooter idea was also explored before the team settled on the large-scale battle direction. Certain Affinity, which has a long history with the franchise — building multiplayer maps for Halo 2 and contributing to Halo: The Master Chief Collection — handled the prototype work.

The reported cause of cancellation isn't the recent Xbox-wide cuts, but rather development problems on Halo: Campaign Evolved, the Unreal Engine 5 remake of the original game, which pulled staff away from Ekur. Halo: Campaign Evolved launches in a couple of weeks and includes co-op, but no competitive multiplayer. That leaves a real gap: Halo Infinite's servers are still up, but its player base has thinned considerably, and there's currently no announced competitive multiplayer title to follow Campaign Evolved.

Whether Ekur is permanently dead or just shelved is unclear. Some observers note that Microsoft has been pushing to revitalise its biggest franchises, and with a new Xbox console on the horizon, leaving Halo without a competitive multiplayer offering for an extended stretch would be an odd move. For now, fans hoping for a proper PvP Halo experience are left waiting with no timeline in sight.