Ubisoft's Treatment of Ghost Recon is Exactly Why the Company is Struggling

1 day ago 1

Published Jan 26, 2026, 10:30 AM EST

Jaime Tugayev is the News Editor for DualShockers with over a decade of experience, and a much longer love for fantasy, shooters and strategy games.

In 2010, SpongeBob aired the episode 'That Sinking Feeling', planting the seed for the 'Squidward looking out of the window while SpongeBob and Patrick are running around' meme. Sixteen years later, and that is exactly what Ubisoft is making me feel.

The errant French developer has won some street cred by updating some classics to run at 60 FPS on modern consoles. They found the time to revisit a host of Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Watchdogs and The Division titles, not to mention a major overhaul to Rainbow Six: Siege.

I'm happy for fans of these franchises, don't get me wrong, but what did Ghost Recon do to be snubbed like this? The neglect of one of Ubisoft's oldest active franchises is a symptom of the downward spiral the company is currently in.

Ghost Recon Was Ubisoft's Experimental Outlet

Despite not being actually based on any Tom Clancy novel, Ghost Recon is undoubtedly the closest game to the author's brand of fiction. Deep political crises are irrevocably intertwined with military action and incredibly high stakes, and the fate of nations falls into the hands of a select few special forces operators.

One thing that sets Ghost Recon apart from other major Ubisoft franchises is how much the company was willing to reinvent it. The franchise's debut in 2001 was a slow-burning tactical FPS that felt hyperrealistic at the time.

A few years later, Advanced Warfighter came in with a completely new angle, leaning instead on an imagined version of future war. In 2012, Future Soldier shifted fully to a third-person perspective and leaned harder on cover mechanics.

The series's biggest hit after the original release was Ghost Recon Wildlands, a 2017 game that took Tom Clancy's work and turned it into an all-encompassing open-world adventure.

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Wildlands is one of the biggest open-world games ever made, with a lively atmosphere and a plot that isn't afraid to rip off Clancy's Clear and Present Danger wherever it's convenient.

You can see Ubisoft learned a thing or two about crime syndicates taking over entire countries through the years with Far Cry, but despite the Grand Theft Auto mechanics of it all, you are still left with the tactical vibe common to all Ghost Recon games.

Breakpoint (2019) was a step backwards in terms of writing and missions, but it still attempted to innovate.

Ubisoft learned a thing or two about crime syndicates taking over entire countries through the years with Far Cry

All of that is to say that while Far Cry and Assassin's Creed quickly settled into a cookie-cutter formula after the first couple of games, Ghost Recon constantly offered Ubisoft an outlet to innovate.

The company leadership, however, doesn't seem to feel that way. We've had a seven-year gap between Ghost Recon releases, next to no promotion for the next game, and the

The lack of interest in platforming this brilliant series insinuates that Ubisoft is more content with remaking the same open-world adventure game instead of taking risks on a franchise that has room for more.

This approach might well provide more shareholder value in the short term, but at some point, people get tired of playing reskinned Far Cry 3. Without striving for more, Ubisoft will undoubtedly be left behind, and executives will learn the hard way that 'too big to fail' is not a real thing.

Ubisoft Has One Shot to Bring Ghost Recon Back

The lack of publicity does not mean Ubisoft has completely abandoned Ghost Recon. The little information that has come out over the years sounds promising, but the latest Ubisoft restructuring has cast some doubt about the future.

Codenamed Project Over, the upcoming game will switch back to a first-person perspective and draw inspiration from more serious and realistic games like VOID Interactive's Ready or Not. If it makes it out the door unscathed, it is bound to be a hit, as players lack accessible realistic shooters.

Working against that is the reorganization of Ubisoft into five Creative Houses. Ghost Recon, along with Splinter Cell and The Division, is under a group that specializes in 'competitive and cooperative shooter experiences'.

Could Ubisoft be trying to force the Rainbow Six pipeline into being again, where a slow, tactical game gets transformed into a bombastic competitive shooter? A recent episode of the Insider Gaming podcast hints that the Ghost Recon franchise might be split into two, with a spin-off title from a separate studio in the works.

Fragmenting the game could work in its favor to avoid diluting the more grounded mainline experience, but it can also easily lead to both games flopping and the franchise ending up in the gutter. That is assuming both games actually come out, which, as we saw with Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, is never a given.

The clock is ticking for Ubisoft to do Ghost Recon justice and bring it back to its glory days, especially with the competition struggling. The Battlefield 6 player count has whittled down to 10% of its launch day peak, while Call of Duty is experiencing its worst crisis yet. If Ghost Recon has any hope of coming back, the time is now.