Tom Clancy's The Division Heartland has officially been cancelled. This cancellation comes as Ubisoft changes their focus towards "bigger opportunities."
The Division Heartland was expected to be a free-to-play action title that was first announced back in 2021. At its core, Heartland was a PvPvE extraction game with a light focus on survival mechanics.
Ubisoft said during their May 15th earnings call that they want to shift "resources to bigger opportunities such as XDefiant and Rainbow Six." This is all obviously a part of Ubisoft's ongoing move to cut costs, "restructure" teams and studios, and move to fewer but bigger titles.
The Division Heartland joins a few other recent Ubisoft cancellations. There were three unannounced titles that the studio canned. A year prior Ubisoft cancelled four additional titles that were in development. The Division Heartland did at least have a few testing phases, but feedback from those tests led to further delays and, according to some reports, a total overhaul of major gameplay mechanics.
In the earnings call, Ubisoft notes that they have laid off over 1,700 people over the course of 18 months. As of March 2024, Ubisoft still employees over 19,000 people.
These layoffs, studio closures, and game cancellations have worked out for Ubisoft, at least on the business side of things. CEO Yves Guillemot said that Ubisoft now shows a "profitable growth trajectory." Guillemot also says that Ubisoft will push more towards creating open world adventure titles and expanding their games as a service (GAAS) offerings. This includes the newly revealed Assassin's Creed Shadows (more on this later today), the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws, The Division Resurgence, Xdefiant, and Rainbow Six Mobile.
