Ubisoft cancels The Division Heartland

Ubisoft has canceled its upcoming free-to-play shooter, Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland, as part of larger plans to focus resources on “bigger opportunities.”

The news was revealed as part of Ubisoft’s earnings release this morning, with the company saying it has “redeployed its resources towards larger opportunities such as XDefiant and Rainbow Six.” The move is part of a larger, longer process that Ubisoft has been following over the past few quarters to restructure its teams, cut costs and focus its resources on fewer, bigger games.

Ubisoft made the following statement regarding the cancellation:

After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to cease development of Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland, effective immediately. Our priority now is to support our talented Red Storm Entertainment studio team members, who will transition to new projects within our company, including XDefiant and Rainbow Six.

The Heartland Division was first announced in 2021 and was developed by North Carolina-based Red Storm Entertainment. It was quietly delayed shortly after its reveal, with its release scheduled for last fiscal year, but it never came to fruition. Heartland went through several testing phases and was in a publicly playable state. Recently, he received a note in Taiwan, leading fans to believe his release was imminent, but this appears to have been a false alarm.

Ubisoft has been on a game cancellation spree of late, having shut down three unannounced games, including its mysterious Project Q, as well as Immortals Fenyx Rising 2 last year. The year before, Ubisoft canceled four other unannounced games, with the company explaining its decision by saying it had tried to make too many games at once.

And over the last year in particular, Ubisoft (like many other major gaming companies) has undergone significant cost-cutting measures, which have included the aforementioned game cancellations, studio closures, and multiple series closures. of layoffs. As noted in Ubisoft’s earnings release, the company reduced its workforce by more than 1,700 people in 18 months, “while retention continued to improve.” As of March 2024, Ubisoft employed 19,011 employees worldwide.

During today’s earnings conference call, CEO Yves Guillemot told investors the company was “back on track” for a “profitable growth trajectory,” noting annual and quarterly net bookings company record announced today. Going forward, Guillemot continued, the company will pursue a strategy to return to leadership in open-world adventure games while expanding its games-as-a-service offering. This year, the company plans to release Assassin’s Creed Shadows (which was just fully revealed today), Rainbow Six Mobile, Star Wars Outlaws, The Division Resurgence, and XDefiant.

And on the technology front, Ubisoft is focusing on its own in-house game engines with just two branches, Anvil and Snowdrop, and is aggressively pursuing generative AI technology, particularly with its NEO NPC program.

For the full year, Ubisoft reported 2.3 billion euros ($2.5 billion) in net bookings and 401 million euros ($436 million) in operating profit.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Do you have a history tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.