As Ubisoft looks forward to its 2025 fiscal year, the company has decided to cancel its free-to-play Division game, The Division Heartland.
Heartland was announced back in 2021, with Ubisoft aiming to have the game in players’ hands by 2022. The planned release window didn’t work out, but in September 2022 we got another look at Heartland, and the game appeared to have everything you’d expect from a free-to-play multiplayer shooter. The game mixed in survival elements, pitting players against enemies swarming the fictional midwestern town of Silver Creek.
In Ubisoft’s fiscal earnings earlier today, mixed in with all the numbers and projections, was the Heartland news. The company wrote, “In line with the increased selectivity of its investments, Ubisoft has decided to stop development on The Division Heartland and has redeployed resources to bigger opportunities such as XDefiant and Rainbow Six.”
Ubisoft’s road ahead seems to be focusing on only the biggest money makers. Last year fans were disappointed when the company canceled plans for an Immortal Fenyx Rising sequel, and of course, the company followed general industry trends by laying off employees. According to the earnings report, Ubisoft cut 1,700 jobs over the course of just 18 months.
Interestingly, Ubisoft’s back catalog seems to have been one of its most reliable streams of revenue. The report specifically calls out Rainbow Six Siege as being a huge boon to the company, and unsurprisingly the Assassin’s Creed franchise also helped grease the wheels. Hopefully that will encourage Ubisoft to reexamine its decision to revoke digital licenses for old games like it did with The Crew just last month.
The world wasn’t exactly dying for another free-to-play shooter, but it’s still disappointing to see a game that devs worked on for years suddenly get the ax. Maybe Ubisoft was hoping to avoid another release like Skull and Bones, while also drawing attention to its bigger upcoming releases like Star Wars Outlaws and XDefiant.
