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Last week, Ubisoft announced at an emergency investor meeting that the company would cut costs by about $215 million over the next two years. As part of these cuts, it was announced that three unannounced games have been canceled – four more games were canceled last year. On top of these cancellations, and unsurprisingly, the publisher also revealed that Skull and Bones will be delayed until FY24 (April 2023 – March 2024).
It’s not uncommon for games to be canceled to cut costs, but why is Ubisoft delaying and canceling their games at an unprecedented rate?
Over the past week, prominent insider Tom Henderson spoke to five current and former Ubisoft employees, who asked to remain anonymous because they are not allowed to speak about the company’s information to get their thoughts and understanding of what exactly is causing the delays and cancellations of games.
One employee, who said he was unaffected by the current news, said management seemed to be pushing the case that the delays were caused by the hybrid and full remote work that was adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. While it’s “too early” for Ubisoft to fix the issue, according to a staff member, the changes currently being discussed will see full remote work phased out from next year.
Such a change would create huge problems for some of the developers who have joined one of Ubisoft’s huge studios during the worldwide lockdown. One employee said they would have to travel 3 hours each way if they were forced to work in an office.
However, the consensus among the staff Tom Henderson spoke to was that the reason for the delays and cancellations of games was that most of the games were “not what gamers wanted”, as reflected in the feedback during QA and playtests. The battle royale genre has been very popular in the last couple of years, and Ubisoft seems to have tried unsuccessfully to capitalize on that success. One of the employees said that at one time they were aware of at least a dozen games in this, which are at various stages of development, but the fate of most of them is unknown.
Surprisingly, almost all of the staff Henderson spoke to said the reason for the delays and cancellations of games is that the games need more work.
One of the employees said: “We definitely don’t have a shortage of games, they just take a lot of time.” An employee revealed that they have been working on an unannounced live service game since 2019, but the game is not expected to release until 2025/2026. Other games that are also yet to be announced have already received release dates of 2027 or later.
So going forward, at least for now, Ubisoft will likely be known for delaying its games – but fingers crossed that means its games will be more polished.
Ubisoft staff said that Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora are expected to perform incredibly well for Ubisoft in FY24, and that follow-up emails and meetings since last Wednesday’s announcements should have “set expectations” for the company’s content. While it hasn’t been confirmed yet, it’s believed that Ubisoft’s yet-to-be-announced major game, most likely Project Orlando, is The Crew’s new game. Assassin’s Creed Project Nexus is also scheduled to release during fiscal year 24, but the game has technically already been announced.
