97 Minutes of Avalanche’s Canceled Open-World Iron Man Game Have Leaked Online

For years, the only public traces of Avalanche Studios' unannounced Iron Man game were rumors and one developer's candid confession. Then, in August 2025, nearly 97 minutes of restored PlayStation 3 dev-kit footage appeared on the Internet Archive, giving players their first real look at a Marvel game that was never supposed to be seen.

According to the uploader, the leak reveals a bold open-world vision from the studio behind Just Cause and Mad Max: free-flight repulsor combat, dogfights with fighter jets, and a full E3-style demo opening. It was ultimately grounded by what co-founder Christofer Sundberg bluntly called "company politics."

Here is what the footage reportedly shows, the story behind the canceled project, and why it matters for the history of Marvel games.

The Leak: Nearly 97 Minutes of Footage Surfaces

On Aug. 23, 2025, eight videos totaling 96 minutes and 56 seconds were uploaded to the Internet Archive, first shared by Reddit user u/LeimBR on r/GamingLeaksAndRumours and later picked up in discussion on ResetEra. The uploader says the recordings come from a restored PlayStation 3 development build in their possession, and the archive listing tags the material as "prototype, e3, demo."

View the leaked Iron Man dev-kit footage

According to the uploader's description, the footage shows Tony Stark taking to the sky under repulsor power, weaving through environments with a vertical freedom similar to Avalanche's previous titles. Ground segments include melee combat against soldiers, while aerial sequences reportedly pit Iron Man against fighter jets in a fully realized dogfight system. The uploader also describes destructible buildings and an E3-style demo opening, complete with a "Stark reveal."

A word of caution: all of these details trace back to the uploader's description. Neither Avalanche Studios nor Marvel or Disney has commented on the leak, and no official party has verified the footage. It is plausible and consistent with the project's known history, but it remains unconfirmed.

The Game That Almost Was: Avalanche's Open-World Iron Man

The project began around 2012, when Disney and Marvel approached Avalanche to build a solo Iron Man game. The studio, best known for the chaotic open-world formula of Just Cause and later the vehicular mayhem of Mad Max, had built its reputation on a simple promise: if you can see it, you can probably get there. Superhero flight was a natural extension of that philosophy.

Sundberg confirmed the project's existence in a 2022 interview on the MinnMax podcast, revealing that development lasted roughly two years. He described an open-world Iron Man game where players could "take off and fly anywhere" at any time, a pitch tailored to a studio whose identity revolves around player-driven verticality.

The project was never officially announced. It existed only as a rumor, the kind of "what if" that Marvel fans would trade theories about for years. The game was ultimately canceled in the early-to-mid 2010s, though the exact date remains unclear, and no official source has confirmed the details of its shutdown.

Why It Was Canceled: "Company Politics" and a Crunched Schedule

Sundberg has been candid about the project's demise. In that same 2022 interview, he blamed "company politics" for the game's cancellation, adding that "it was a mess by the end." Eurogamer's later coverage of the interview reported that Disney wanted to cut roughly a year from the development schedule, a significant compression for a project with the scope of an open-world Iron Man game.

The exact circumstances of the cancellation remain unclear, and no official party has confirmed the details. But Sundberg's comments point to a production where the game's size and the publisher's timeline were pulling in opposite directions. The leaked footage offers a rare glimpse of what that struggle was in service of, even if the final product never materialized.

What This Leak Isn't: The EA Motive Iron Man Game

One important distinction: the leaked footage is not related to EA Motive's Iron Man game. Motive's title, announced in September 2022, is a single-player, third-person action adventure that remains in active development at Electronic Arts. The Avalanche build is a separate, much older project that was canceled years ago.

No evidence connects the two, and the leak should not be read as a teaser for Motive's game or as a sign that the older project is being revived. The distinction matters because headlines can easily blur two similarly named projects, and a reader skimming coverage could reasonably assume this footage came from the announced title. It did not.

Why the Leak Matters: A Window Into Marvel Gaming's Lost Era

Before this upload, the project had no official footage, no screenshots, and no announcement. It existed only as rumor and as a brief, candid confession from Sundberg. The Internet Archive footage offers something the gaming community rarely gets: a look at a canceled, unannounced triple-A project in a demonstrable state.

It also shows how Avalanche's design DNA, free movement, verticality, and systemic destruction, might have translated to a superhero setting. The result is a kind of alternate timeline, one where an open-world Iron Man game existed years before the current crop of superhero titles.

For preservationists, the leak raises a larger question: how many other canceled builds are sitting on dev kits and collector hard drives, undocumented and at risk of being lost? In the absence of any comment from Avalanche, Marvel, or Disney, the Internet Archive has become the de facto home for a game that almost existed.

The leaked Iron Man footage will not lead to a release, and it may not prompt an official statement from either Marvel or Disney. It is a digital fossil of a game that was quietly grounded before it could take off. But even in its unfinished dev-kit form, the 97 minutes preserve a vision of what Avalanche dreamed up, what Disney cut, and what players lost when the project disappeared. For now, the Internet Archive is the closest thing we have to a museum for this lost Marvel game.