Why did Ghost Recon Frontline get canceled? Explained

Any Tom Clancy fans that were looking forward to Ghost Recon Frontline will be shocked to learn that the game has been canceled. Originally slated to launch at some point in 2022 across all modern consoles and PC, the battle royale shooter will no longer see the light of day.

Why was Ghost Recon Frontline canceled?

Ubisoft’s official statement on the matter claims that the cancellation was due to the company’s evolving financial situation. This doesn’t exactly explain what went wrong, but we can offer our best educated guess. Looking back at the trajectory of its marketing cycle, the closed multiplayer beta was delayed indefinitely shortly after the game’s announcement. Ubisoft only stated that the delay was implemented to offer the best possible experience.

Digging a little deeper, however, there’s potentially a bit more behind this delay. Ghost Recon Frontline’s announcement video was met with extremely negative reactions from general consumers. While YouTube dislikes were removed from public viewing a month after the video was posted, we can still see a huge amount of disdain for the project within the original comments sections. Perhaps reinventing the game enough to satisfy people wasn’t worth the investment. Ubisoft might prefer spending those resources on other projects such as Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

Related: Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora now releasing after new movie, scheduled for 2023 or 2024

Past Ghost Recon and Ubisoft controversies

This cancellation isn’t the only controversy involving Ubisoft and the Ghost Recon franchise. Only two months after Ghost Recon Frontline’s announcement, the publisher released Ubisoft Quartz, an NFT platform that originally launched with Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

Related: NFTs are coming to Ubisoft games as the company unveils Ubisoft Quartz

Understandably, this caused a ton of uproar among the Ghost Recon community. Despite the backlash, Ubisoft never officially denounced Ubisoft Quartz. However, Ghost Recon Breakpoint support ended four months after the Ubisoft Quartz introduction. No other games have launched with the much despised NFT integration. It’s entirely possible that this situation may have also played a role in attempting to convert audience expectations.