M Alzamora 
Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland has been officially canceled by Ubisoft and fans of the franchise are scrambling to find out why.
Heartland was meant to be a free-to-play, third-person shooter game set in the expansive Division Universe created by Red Storm Entertainment and Ubisoft. The game was originally announced in May 2021 and was set to feature PvP and PvE combat. The Division’s next game was seemingly set to enter early access or a closed beta of some kind in early 2024 after being greenlit by a software ratings board.
Instead, Ubisoft announced on its corporate site that Tom Clancy’s Division Heartland was being canceled effective immediately. Ubisoft still has plans to release a full slate of games in the coming months with a greater focus on franchise series and more internal game engines.
Why did Ubisoft cancel Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland?
Ubisoft stated that it decided to divert development resources away from The Division Heartland to focus on other games.
These resources will be rededicated to the upcoming XDefiant, Rainbow Six, and other opportunities to be later announced. Ubisoft has a number of major projects in development both officially revealed, like Star Wars Outlaws, and games that are in a more vague state like the Splinter Cell remake.
Tom Clancy’s Division: Heartland was seemingly the latest victim of consolidation measures and the decision to invest in more promising ventures. Other major publishers have made similar moves including Square Enix which canceled a slew of games and dropped exclusivity plans for major releases days prior.
Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland is the latest game to be canceled by Ubisoft, but it certainly isn’t the first. In the past few years, Ubisoft has canned several games in various stages of development.
Ubisoft hypes up Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Star Wars Outlaws after canceling Heartland
Ubisoft stressed that gamers can expect free-to-play Ubisoft releases such as The Division Resurgence, XDefiant, and a Rainbow Six mobile game. On the paid side, it highlighted Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin’s Creed: Shadows.
The team behind the now-canceled The Division Heartland, will be “redeployed…to bigger opportunities such as XDefiant and Rainbow Six” according to the company’s report.
Ubisoft intends to return to more open-world style games in the future and to continue building multiplayer and mobile systems with its proprietary game engines. It also plans to expand the use of NEO NPC, a controversial, Ubisoft-developed, player-facing Generative AI system that controls NPCs.
Games like The Division: Resurgence will likely continue making appearances in Ubisoft’s catalog moving forward.
