Ubisoft has not been having the best of times recently, especially when it comes to the AAA or even “AAAA” titles that they’ve made. No sooner did they announce the next entry in its assassination franchise than they revealed in a financial call that another game in another prominent franchise is canceled. Specifically, after years of teasing about what it would be like, The Division Heartland has been canceled. Not only that, the assets and resources that were going to the game have now been put into other teams and titles. So what happened to make this game go from “almost ready to release” to canceled?
In a statement received by VGC, Ubisoft outlined in its financial call that they were trying to be wiser with its “investments” and decided that this game wasn’t the best for them. Chief financial officer Frédérick Duguet had this to say about it:
“In line with the increased selectivity of our investment, we have decided to stop development on The Division Heartland and are redeploying our resources to bigger opportunities like XDefiant and Rainbow Six Siege.”
Duguet said that the decision to cancel the game was “difficult but necessary,” and Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot added that the game didn’t “align” with the company’s goals. Specifically, the company is trying to focus solely on open-world titles and “games as a service.”
While this cancelation will be a shock to some, it might be to others who have seen the “writing on the wall” for a while. For example, the game wasn’t getting constant updates, and there were even rumors that it had been canceled last month, only for it to be “debunked.” Clearly, those people were right on the first try.
Second, when you look at Ubisoft’s “success rate” in recent years, it’s not been consistent. Their most recent release, Skull & Bones, is one of the most panned games of the year, even with the company’s CEO boasting about “how much content the game has” and that it was on “another level of quality.” It wasn’t at all, and the sales numbers reflect that.
The Division Heartland was supposed to be a free-to-play MMO-style shooter and likely would’ve relied solely on microtransactions to make a profit. Perhaps Ubisoft felt they couldn’t recoup costs and decided to cut and run.
Sadly, other companies like Sony, Square Enix, and even Microsoft have gone through “serious changes” in the past week or so, and more like Ubisoft might continue that trend.
