The Division: Heartland has received a rating in Taiwan.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, the rating dates back to November 14, 2023. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to confirm the rating. Here’s why that’s relevant.
The Division: Heartland is one of many games where Ubisoft is planning a transition, from their full retail franchises, towards free-to-play monetization models. The Division and The Division 2 do share certain elements with live service games, but they aren’t quite transitioned to that other model.
For such games to get as broad an audience as possible, developers are incentivized to lower the age rating on their games as possible. It’s one of the reasons that games like Minecraft and Roblox are spoken of as giants. But, even on another level, Fortnite has emerged over PUBG and Call of Duty Mobile because families can play on that platform.
Ubisoft revealed this game nearly a year ago from today, but they have been quiet about its progress. This is partly understandable, because development cycles now take so long that it’s best to start marketing games two months before they release.
But in this case, Ubisoft announced that The Division: Heartland would be releasing this year. We are now at the second to the last month of the year, and a few days away from the last month of the year. If Ubisoft is about to release The Division: Heartland, then we should already be getting an update, much less a full trailer. If Ubisoft has to delay the game, even if only up to January, we the consumers (alongside Ubisoft’s investors) should be getting notified of that too.
We also can’t ignore that this is happening in a precarious time for Ubisoft. There is the scandal around sexual misconduct allegations, which led to people leaving the company and getting investigated by the Frenceh government. That, in turn, led to a rough environment for the company to complete their games.
While Ubisoft is hardly the first game company to face such issues, they may have been facing these issues and extended deep scrutiny for a far more extended period of time, compared to their peers. This compromises the feasibility of The Division: Heartland’s success; in turn, the pressure is high on developers to make The Division: Heartland succeed.
At least, if the game isn’t quite launching as a 10/10 game, studio Red Storm can refine it in time as a live service game, as long as they have a captive audience hooked.
The Division: Heartland is planned for release in 2023 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Microsoft Windows via the Ubisoft Connect client. You can watch the full overview trailer below.
