Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment AB has taken the L in a big way, as they have accidentally broken The Division 2 in such a way that they can’t even update it properly.
They shared this message on the official Twitter account for Tom Clancy’s The Division franchise:
“A Message From The Division 2 Team
Dear Agents,
Last week, we shared news that the season would be delayed due to a localization issue. This past Saturday, in the process of creating the update which would resolve the issue, we encountered an issue that brought down the build generation system for The Division 2. As a result, we cannot update the game until this system has been rebuilt.
In the past, when a Season was delayed, we extended the previous Season’s activities. Unfortunately, this is not possible in the current situation, as we are unable to make server or client side updates until the build generation system is restored.
We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. We have made good progress over the last 96 hours and have been able to restore critical aspects of the system and will share the timeline for resolution when available.
We deeply appreciate your understanding and patience and will share our in-game compensation plan details soon.
Our next update will be provided tomorrow.
The Division 2 Development Team”
As reported by Insider Gaming, the next Title Update for The Division 2 was dubbed Reign Of Fire. Massive Entertainment has not shared any details about the update, but because of the issues they have with the game, they abruptly cancelled their February 6 livestream where they were going to share these details.
The situation is the worst-case scenario for a live service game like The Division 2, or the likes of Destiny 2, Fortnite, and World of WarCraft. This is probably not the very first time ever, when an online game’s own system and design, works against the developer, in allowing them to update the game.
But aside from the embarrassment of having to make all of this public, to properly inform their player base, it’s a lot of lost income. This genre of game sinks or swims based on how much money it makes per month, or day, or even per hour.
Fortunately, Tom Clancy’s The Division: Heartland, the next game in the series, is being developed by Red Storm Entertainment instead of Massive Entertainment. Tom Clancy’s The Division: Heartland is conceived of as a free-to-play spin-off, with streamlined survival gameplay, so Ubisoft has different expectations for it instead of the full retail price The Division games that have been released so far.
As for The Division 2, its players will likely be more patient and less fickle than free-to-play gamers as they paid full price for it. They will also likely be back to play when it eventually does come back online.
