A prominent industry journalist reports on Ubisoft, sharing insights gathered from studio staff about the workplace culture and upcoming titles. The conversations reveal how teams perceive leadership decisions and what they anticipate for the studio’s future projects.
State of affairs within the company:
- Employee morale at Ubisoft has fallen to a historically low point, with staff fearing the potential for mass layoffs and restructuring.
- The current strategic direction is fueling stress within teams. In recent years the company has tried to align with trends such as NFTs and large-scale multiplayer formats. By the end of 2021, sources indicate the organization was exploring about a dozen battle royale concepts.
Transfers and their reasons:
- Delays in game development have become more common, notably in online action projects that have stretched over many years, such as Skull and Bones, which has been in development for a decade.
- Reportedly, Skull and Bones carried a development budget around $200 million. Management changes focused on visibility and marketing have contributed to a shifting sense of priorities, creating a divided atmosphere where some developers felt unclear about daily tasks.
- One team member described a tendency to drift toward consuming related video content while awaiting direction.
Sales dates:
- Several staff members believe a series of missteps has dampened interest in Ubisoft’s titles, affecting active player engagement.
- Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was released mid-January. It received positive reception from players and critics but moved only about 300,000 copies, translating to roughly $15 million in revenue.
- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was scheduled to launch with the second film in the Avatar franchise but faced delays, arriving a year late and with modest marketing. It sold around 1.9 million copies, generating approximately $133 million. By contrast, The Division 2 earned about $264 million in its first two weeks after release.
- Assassin’s Creed Mirage drew roughly 5 million players since its launch.
Despite these hurdles, several high-potential releases are on the horizon, as highlighted by Henderson.
- Star Wars Outlaws – anticipated in the first half of 2024, with a note of possible delays.
- Assassin’s Creed: Codename Red – planned for the second half of 2024.
- A new Ghost Recon installment (Project Over) set against the backdrop of a fictional conflict known as the Naiman War – scheduled for 2025 to 2026.
- Two Far Cry entries, a multiplayer project codenamed Maverick and a full sequel named Blackbird – planned for 2025 to 2026.
- New Assassin’s Creed chapters with working titles Hexe and Invictus – slated for 2025 to 2026.
- Remake of Splinter Cell – targeting 2025 to 2026.
- An action shooter set during World War II – anticipated between 2026 and 2027.
- Several additional Assassin’s Creed titles are mentioned, including a remake of Black Flag, known in development as Project Obsidian.
Recent reports also note that revolutionary neural network technologies are playing a role in efforts related to future game development. This information comes from industry observers who track technology trends in major studios.