In recent weeks, Ubisoft has unveiled its plans for The Division franchise. From the release of The Division Heartland to the content planned for The Division 2 in 2023, the franchise is experiencing a real resurgence in popularity and seems more important to the publisher than it was initially. Indeed, as we learn in the columns of
MP1STsupport for the game was supposed to end much sooner, but plans have changed.
The studio was busy with other projects
In 2020, Massive Entertainment announced that Update 12 would be the last big update for The Division 2. Support was due to end soon after, as the studio was busy on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and its Star Wars game.
Yannick Banchereau, Creative Director of the game, explains in particular:
It was a real rollercoaster because yes the plan was after update 12, at the end of 2020 the plan was to, stop supporting the game. As the question mentions, we started working on the Star Wars game, we have the Avatar game… Everyone is very busy at Massive and the idea was that we only needed the people on these projects.
He explains that the game continued to be successful, especially after the release of the big expansion Warlords of New York, which brought players back to the streets of New York, and that this encouraged teams to reconsider their plans:
It’s not because The Division 2 was bad, it’s just that we needed people on the other projects. You know, what happened was that the game continued to be successful, and probably more than we expected after Warlords of New York came out, and the different seasons. It allowed us to pick up the conversation internally and ask ourselves if we shouldn’t continue.
Ubisoft Bucharest as reinforcement
The decision was made to continue supporting the game. It was then necessary to find teams to take care of it, and this is how a collaboration with Ubisoft Bucharest was set up.
Yannick Banchereau explains that the studio has learned a lot in Year 4, and that Year 5 will be the result of this collaboration with a now experienced team who know how to build things in The Division 2:
The people who were working on the project have moved on to other projects and we can’t call them back and tell them to come back to The Division. That was the main challenge for us: finding a team and we did that at Ubisoft Bucharest.
Since then, the collaboration between Massive and Ubisoft Bucharest has been excellent. What we see today in Year 5 is the true result of this collaboration. The time we spent at Ubisoft Bucharest learning the engine and the game allowed us to learn how to work together in a way that flexed our muscles in a live game.
As a reminder, year 5 of The Division 2 will offer a lot of content, such as a new rogue-lite mode, a new story DLC and a return to New York. You will find the details in our dedicated article.
The Division 2 remains available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC as well as Xbox Series X|S and PS5. It’s optimized for next-gen consoles and now’s probably the best time to check it out cheaply.
