The Division Heartland was supposed to boost Ubisoft’s games-services department by reinventing the structure of extraction shooters. Sent to pacify a small town in the American Midwest contaminated by the Dollar Flu, players had to come together in small groups to explore the surrounding area, collect equipment, and take down rival players or hostile NPCs. The pandemic was supposed to affect the gameplay loop by locking down certain contaminated areas; the most courageous soldiers could have defied the ban using fragile air filters to unearth wonders. A fairly effective concept, but apparently not enough of a driver in 2024 – which is crazy given that Red Storm initially intended to publish the beast during the 2022 fiscal year.
And Ubisoft is to blame
Like the FPS XDefiant, which accumulated successive delays until it slipped by a full year, it would seem that The Division Heartland was assassinated due to internal delays. Ryan Smith, ex-level designer on The Division 2, commented on the announcement on Twitter: “I was part of the small team that started this project in 2019. It was supposed to be a low-risk battle royale mode for The Division 2. Our vision was clear and development was off to a good start, but Ubisoft and Red Storm had… other ideas. The project has changed drastically. Sad that it will never see the light of day.“Which is not entirely correct since Heartland benefited from a closed beta last year…
“After deliberation, we made the difficult decision to stop the development of Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartlandeffective immediately“, indicates Ubisoft laconically. “Our current priority is to support the Red Storm Entertainment team as they join other projects within our company, including XDefiant and Rainbow Six Siege.“The two FPS must be the financial locomotive of Guillemot in the years to come.
The future of The Division franchise will have to be written in the north, with the Swedes of Massive, who are currently working on The Division 3. As for the mobile version The Division Resurgence, Ubisoft has not given any news, although it is still possible to pre-register.
