20 Stupid Decisions That Destroyed Their Franchise

20. A Live-Service Pivot - Ghost Recon Frontlines

Premiering with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon in 2001, the Ghost Recon series offered a broader and more strategic/militaristic alternative to Rainbow Six’s close-quarters tactical tension. As with any long-running video game venture, its commercial and critical results have fluctuated since then, but the franchise nonetheless remained a worthwhile pursuit for Ubisoft.

Then came 2019’s Division-esque Breakpoint, which embraced one of the industry’s worst modern fads: live-service hijinks. That inclusion – plus forced NFTs, repetitious missions, copy-and-paste open-world design, and a lack of a central identity – led to disappointing sales and abandonment from discouraged players. True, the backlash against microtransactions eventually forced Ubisoft to remove some of them, but the damage was done.

Rather than reverse their increasingly formulaic direction and recapture their singular allure with their next attempt, they chose to fully jump the shark with the free-to-play live-service MMO battle royale monstrosity of Ghost Recon Frontline.

It was announced in October of 2021, and early glimpses drew disheartened comparisons to Call of Duty: Warzone, thereby highlighting how much Ghost Recon had moved away from its roots. The criticism intensified after footage of the early 2022 beta test leaked, and by July, Ghost Recon Frontline was canceled and the Ghost Recon name was further tarnished.

A new title might be on the way, but as the saying goes, seeing is believing.