Ubisoft is continuing to try to carve out a niche in the games-as-a-service market, this time with a new battle royale game that takes a lot of inspiration from Respawn Entertainment and EA's Apex Legends, Insider Gaming reports, citing its own sources.
The project, which has been in development for several years, is internally called Scout. Its similarities to Apex Legends are so great that they even used the cover of the game from Respawn at first. In addition, the new game will have characters similar to Wraith, Pathfinder, Lifeline, and others.
"I think the goal is to capitalize on the player count of Apex dropping and them [Ubisoft higher-ups] thinking there’s room in the market for another hero Battle Royale," says an anonymous source.
Ubisoft's new battle royale game contradicts internal company research that suggests the number of players interested in the genre has been declining recently. Despite this, Ubisoft has decided to continue development of the project, although the company has previously struggled to understand what genre will be popular next.
Ubisoft's desire to launch a successful online project is nothing new. In August 2020, the company released the free-to-play battle royale Hyper Scape, which failed to meet expectations and was shut down in April 2022.
In 2024, the company also released the team-based shooter XDefiant, which attracted 8 million players in its first week, but failed to maintain its audience. Shortly after, the game began to experience serious problems, and in December it was announced that the servers would be shut down in the summer of 2025.
Electronic Arts, which is the publisher of Apex Legends, is also unhappy with the performance of the battle royale game that Ubisoft wants to copy. The company's CEO previously stated that the game is no longer meeting financial expectations, but they are not going to abandon the project and Respawn is currently working on a major update that will become Apex Legends 2.0.
As a reminder, Ubisoft is currently in a difficult situation. The company's share price has fallen to 2014 levels after the failure of Star Wars Outlaws, and profits are set to fall by 30% in 2024. In an attempt to rectify the situation, the French game developer and Chinese company Tencent have launched a new subsidiary that will manage the Assassin's Creed, Far Cry and Rainbow Six franchises.