Development is reportedly not going well on two major upcoming Ubisoft games, and fans are starting to worry. The gaming giant's next marquee release is Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, a remake that's bringing major changes to the open-world pirate classic in July, but other franchises may not be progressing as smoothly. Official announcements for the next Far Cry and Ghost Recon installments remain elusive, and that may not change any time soon.
There has recently been a management shake-up in the development of a new Ghost Recon, known as Project OVR, according to Insider Gaming. The changes are seemingly in response to missed deadlines, which developers have blamed on project mismanagement, citing "unrealistic deadlines and poor planning." In relation to the report, Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson tweeted an addendum: "The next mainline Far Cry game development has also been abysmal."
In October, it will have been five years since Far Cry 6 was released to lukewarm reviews. It has been an even longer hiatus for Ghost Recon; Breakpoint came out in 2019 to a similarly muted reception. The next Ghost Recon has been rumored to re-embrace the series' mil-sim roots, but the project remains officially unannounced. It is now looking possible that Ghost Recon remain in limbo for a while longer. Developers are starting to worry that Project OVR may undergo "a complete reboot," or even be canceled entirely if things cannot come together.
Henderson's remarks on Far Cry aren't as detailed, though he does clarify in a reply to the above tweet that the game may have been targeting a March 2027 release, but has now been pushed back sometime into Ubisoft's next fiscal year. Fans of Ubisoft's two shooter series are now very worried. For one Reddit commenter, it has been an astounding fall from grace after Wildlands was followed by "a sequel that basically ruined everything," especially now that Ubisoft "can't get this project started."
News of Far Cry struggling has been met with similar pessimism about not just the series, but Ubisoft as a whole. In response to Henderson saying Far Cry 7's development is "abysmal," another Reddit comment bluntly opines, "Everything at Ubisoft is abysmal." There may be some truth among the hyperbole – Assassin's Creed: Codename Hexe, the series' next mainline entry, recently saw its game director depart the project. But rumblings seem to indicate that it is coming along better than both Far Cry and Ghost Recon.
Ubisoft has increasingly specialized in open-world games. Far Cry has long been that, but Ghost Recon only adopted truly open-world design with Wildlands in 2017. Triple-A game development times continue to balloon, but these two franchises appear to be mired in further difficulties. There were only two years between Wildlands and Breakpoint, after all. Ubisoft has two major franchises struggling to release a new game, and fans are starting to take notice.
