Ubisoft announced Wednesday that it would be canceling its in-development,free-to-play third-person shooter Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland, citing a recalibration of its resources. It also said that it would be moving workers at Red Storm, the support studio in charge of the game, onto other projects.
In a statement to IGN, a studio spokesperson noted that the company made “the tough call” to end development of the game “effective immediately” to move to “bigger opportunities such as XDefiant and Rainbow Six.”
“After careful consideration, we have made the tough call to halt development on Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland, effective immediately. Our priority now is to support the talented team members at our Red Storm Entertainment studio, who will be transitioning to new projects within our company, including XDefiant and Rainbow Six.”
The news comes alongside the company’s latest financial report, which also released on Wednesday. Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot said that while the studio is “back on track on its profitable growth trajectory” and is looking at a strong lineup for the next year, including Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Star Wars Outlaws, it’ll be refocusing on open-world adventure games in established franchises like Assassin’s Creed and “expanding [its] footprint” into games-as-service titles like XDefiant. It’ll also continue to invest in generative AI
Heartland is just one of multiple titles the publisher has canceled over the past few years. In January 2023, it announced it was canceling three unannounced games, after four were canceled the previous year. As with much of the video game industry, Ubisoft has also seen a number of layoffs — 1,700, according to the financial report.
The Division Heartland was announced in 2021 as a standalone, free-to-play title for consoles and PC. It was being developed by support studio Red Storm, and was set to launch by the end of 2022, according to a Ubisoft blog post, but that did not happen. It was later delayed into 2023, and a closed beta launched in June of that year. This was at a time when Ubisoft was putting more resources behind the franchise, as it also announced a mobile title called The Division Resurgence and a Netflix movie starring Jessica Chastain and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Ubisoft isn’t done with The Division series, though, with Resurgence still in the works. The mobile game just had a limited closed technical test in April, and is on track for a release by March 2025, according to the financial report.
