Ubisoft used to be one of the biggest, most important gaming companies in the industry. Their lineup of franchises and games includes Prince of Persia, Rayman, Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and the Tom Clancy series. Games like Assassin’s Creed Black Flag and Far Cry 3 are some of the best selling and well known video games of all time. In the 2000s and early 2010s, Ubisoft kept producing hit after hit. It didn’t seem like they’d ever slow down.
But fast forward to 2026, and Ubisoft has turned into one of the biggest laughingstocks of the gaming world. Customers regularly meme and insult whatever Ubisoft does. Games from their flagship franchises are selling a fraction of what they once were. They’ve laid off large numbers of their staff and closed entire studios. There’s a very real chance Ubisoft may go bankrupt in the next couple of years. This article is going to look at the reasons why.
Never Trying to Innovate
In Far Cry 3, the main character gets dropped into a region controlled by the megalomaniac yet charismatic villain Vaas. They then have to liberate the region from the dictator by capturing outposts, climbing and reclaiming radio towers, and upgrading skills. You can also craft upgrades for your weapon and obtain skills like being able to sprint for longer. It redefined what an open world could be, and it was a critical and commercial success.
The issue is that Ubisoft saw this success, and instead of doing anything to improve and do something new, they rehashed the exact same formula for every subsequent Far Cry game. The same liberating outposts, skill and weapon upgrades and even the same kind of charismatic, insane villain. This fear of innovation has extended to every other big franchise of Ubisoft’s, including Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs. There’s no point in playing a Ubisoft game, because they’re the same thing with a different coat of paint. It’s gotten so bad that Ubisoft wouldn’t allow development for games like Expedition 33 and Dispatch, which both went on to be critical and commercial successes in 2025. By not allowing innovation, Ubisoft has kept itself from digging out of the hole they’ve created through the many, many bad business decisions that have piled up over the years.
Not Owning Your Games
In January 2024, director of subscriptions at Ubisoft Philippe Tremblay said that gamers need to be comfortable with not owning your games. In other words, Ubisoft will have a subscription service where people pay to access games, and Ubisoft owns the rights. They can revoke access to any game at any time, just like subscription services like Netflix. But what makes it even worse is that you’d have to pay full price for each individual game. You’re also losing potentially dozens, if not hundreds of hours of playtime connected to your game. That can be difficult, if not outright impossible, to reclaim. This statement tanked Ubisoft’s PR, and the company would soon prove how far they’re willing to go.
In late 2023, Ubisoft delisted the always online racing game The Crew from all digital storefronts. On March 31st, 2024, the servers for the game shut down completely. And because no server software was publicly released, the game became unplayable. To make matters worse, Ubisoft straight up revoked the game license from people who had bought it on their publisher specific storefront Ubisoft Connect. They essentially stole back the product people paid real money for. Because of this, there’s a pending lawsuit against Ubisoft over digital ownership, as well as the Stop Killing Games movement, a consumer movement aimed at preserving video games after they’re taken offline. Because of Ubisoft’s decisions, entire laws surrounding digital ownership may change.
The Insane Amount of Controversies and Issues
I’ve only scratched the surface as to why Ubisoft is failing as a company. There’s the push to include microtransactions in single player games like Assassin’s Creed for things like experience boosters. They’re artificially creating a grind in single player games in order to get more money out of the player.
Then there’s the development hell of Skull and Bones. Ubisoft wanted to make a game centered around ship combat and piracy. The issue is that the game went through numerous changes in design and scope, exceeding the project’s budget several times. With all the development issues, it didn’t come out until 2024. It was six years after its first release date, and Ubisoft spent 200 million dollars in total. Ubisoft should’ve canceled the project years ago, but they couldn’t, because they received funding from the Singapore government, and they expected something from their investment.
And then you have their most recent controversy. In February 2026, Ubisoft cancelled six different projects, from unannounced titles to the heavily anticipated Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake, which had also been in development hell for several years. They also delayed the release of seven other projects and didn’t provide any concrete release date. To put the cherry on top, Ubisoft closed their studios in Nova Scotia and Sweden. This was all done in the mission of restructuring, but it’s debatable whether this will lead to anything. Ubisoft has lost to companies like Capcom and FromSoftware in recent years. Unless this last ditch restructuring leads to a revival of the company, it’s looking likely to shut down in the next couple of years. It’s a sad way to go for a company that used to be one of the best in the world.
