Key Takeaways
- Ubisoft reportedly restarted development on Project U in March 2024.
- The co-op shooter is said to have been rebooted due to concerns over its lack of replayability.
- Ubisoft reportedly decided against canceling Project U outright because of belief that co-op shooters have a lot of potential in the current market.
Ubisoft has restarted development on Project U, a well-known industry insider has claimed. Following this purported move, the mysterious Ubisoft project is believed to have returned to square one after five years’ worth of development.
Initially announced in September 2022, Project U was originally touted as a “session-based” co-op shooter. The first Project U playtest was held shortly afterward, available exclusively to PC players in Western Europe. While Ubisoft held several more tests in the years that followed, the company revealed little new information about the game since its original announcement.
Related
Ubisoft Targeted in Lawsuit Also Involving Meta
Ubisoft finds itself targeted by a new lawsuit involving Facebook owner Meta and allegations of wiretapping legislation violations.
Although the shooter is still believed to be in the works, Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson now reports that Ubisoft rebooted its development, citing sources close to the company. The decision to scrap the current version of Project U and start from scratch was supposedly made in March 2024, as per the same source. This would have been shortly after Skull and Bones debuted to underwhelming reviews, although its lackluster launch isn’t believed to have directly impacted Project U, another live-service project.
Ubisoft Was Reportedly Concerned About Project U’s Replayability
Instead, Ubisoft supposedly decided to return to the drawing board due to concerns over the game’s replayability, or lack thereof. This conclusion was reportedly drawn from several rounds of closed tests, the latest of which was held in early February 2024. Even so, the core gameplay loop of Project U—which tasks ten four-player teams with fighting waves of robot invaders until taking out a boss—is said to have elicited praise from testers.
Project U Is Reportedly Changing Developers
Instead of canceling the game outright, Ubisoft decided to reboot it with a different team, Henderson reports. Riders Republic developer Ubisoft Annecy is hence said to no longer be attached to the project, though it’s presently unclear which studio is going to replace it. Project U Directors Damien Kieken and Mathieu Granjon have both reportedly moved on to new endeavors. Kieken’s LinkedIn profile reveals he joined EA subsidiary DICE in November 2024, whereas Henderson claims that Granjon is now working on an Assassin’s Creed project.
The reason why Ubisoft is still interested in pursuing Project U supposedly stems from it being bullish on PvE shooters. Decision makers at the company have reportedly internally cited the immense success of Helldivers 2 as evidence that the market is currently fairly receptive to quality co-op shooters. But now that Project U is being rebooted, there’s no way of telling whether this will still be the case by the time it’s ready to be released. After all, modern AAA development cycles now take around five years on average—and that’s for games that already have a studio attached to them, which Project U might not at the moment.
Ubisoft
Ubisoft is a well-known video game developer and publisher with a main headquarters in Saint-Mandé, France. Current CEO Yves Guillemot runs an array of teams responsible for some of the most iconic and well-known series in video games, with franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Farcry, The Crew, Just Dance, and more. Ubisoft also acts as a parent company for an array of other video game developers, including names like Massive Entertainment, Ubisoft Paris, Blue Mammoth Games, Red Storm Entertainment, and more.
- Date Founded
- March 28, 1986
- Headquarters
- Saint Mandé, France
- CEO
- Yves Guillemot