By the end of this year, the French gaming giant Ubisoft is closing six open-ended projects. It is believed that this is due to the company’s desire to focus on developing and supporting only premium products.
On the official websites and forums of six Ubisoft games, information has appeared about the termination of support and the shutdown of servers.
On October 25, after two years of open beta, a role-playing project with the possibility of building its own castle, The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, will cease to exist. The servers of the card collectible game Might & Magic Duel of Champions will be closed on October 31. Tom Clancy’s Endwar Online real-time strategy will officially close on the same day as Silent Hunter Online with Panzer General Online. On December 1, the Ghost Recon Phantoms action game will cease to exist.
Against the background of the mass closure of free-play games, a number of Western media speculated about Ubisoft’s plans to abandon such a distribution model altogether. How close they are to the truth is an open question, since the closure may also be related to the company’s desire to free its portfolio from unsuccessful projects.
Ubisoft is unlikely to refuse mobile free-play games. In the spring of this year, Hungry Shark World showed itself very well. The performance of Rayman Adventures is worse, but the release of this game was also noticeable. An interesting-looking mobile – and also fried – game “about horses” Horse Adventure: Tale of Etria is on the way.
Updated 2: removed about the fact that the “only” freeplay games are mobile.
Updated: Earlier it was noted that all browser-based Might & Magic MMOs are currently closed. That’s not so. Might & Magic Heroes Online is still functioning.
Sources: Ubisoft, Motherboard, Golem