Sleeping Dogs was one of the most ambitious games of the last generation which put us in the shoes of a cop who went undercover to uncover the dirty secrets of the underworld in Hong Kong. Sleeping Dogs 2 was supposed to be an even more ambitious title with a living and breathing open world. Canadian-based game developer United Front Games went out of business in October of 2017.
Sleeping Dogs 2 would have picked up exactly where the first one left off as the protagonist would be accompanied by a corrupt partner in the streets of Pearl River Megacity, which is a real place.
The game hadn’t actually ever entered the production phase but the documents from pre-production of 2013 seemed quite promising. The most ambitious feature of the game was the accompanied free-to-play mobile game and how it would actually affect the real game. The choices you made in the mobile game could impact the environment, story as well as the NPCs of the game.
United Front Games obviously had big plans for Sleeping Dogs 2. As part of pre-production, and before Square Enix had given the green light to move forward, the developers had worked on only very basic, experimental prototypes. The game wasn’t very far along, a source said, and at the time of this project’s cancellation, the core design was still very much in flux.
As promising as the game might have been, the situation at the studio wasn’t at its best for the developers. Additionally, Hitman and Tomb Raider were a priority for Square Enix, the publisher, at the time, which meant a shortage of budget for United Front.
The last project United Front Games published was a multiplayer brawler called Smash+Grab, which seemed to build on the excellent, Batman: Arkham Asylum-like combat featured in Sleeping Dogs.
United Front Games went out of business like a lot of developers: silently. There was no final blog thanking fans, or a live stream celebrating the studio’s history. Smash+Grab suddenly wasn’t available to purchase on Steam, and soon, Twitter revealed the rest of the story.
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