More Details Leak About Ubisoft’s Rumored Multiplayer Shooter

Ubisoft is apparently working on a new multiplayer shooter, if claims by leakers are correct, and more details about the project have recently surfaced. Despite releasing several games in recent years that had what the company considers underwhelming sales, Ubisoft remains one of the largest video game development and publishing companies in the world. It has its hands in many pies, including a number of multiplayer shooters like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and The Division 2.
In April, rumors surfaced about Ubisoft developing a multiplayer shooter title to compete with Apex Legends. The game, which has apparently already been in development for a couple of years, is code named Scout. And it has been so heavily inspired by Respawn Entertainment’s free-to-play battle royale that an Apex Legends image was used as a thumbnail for the project.
Now, additional details have been shared online about Ubisoft’s rumored Project Scout from leakers 6leaksgg and Shiny77. According to the latter, the upcoming game is possibly being developed in Unreal Engine 5 and will be set in a sci-fi universe. As expected, it will be a multiplayer first-person shooter with a large-scale competitive setting and full crossplay enabled. Leaker 6leaksgg corroborated this information and also shared a couple of work-in-progress screenshots of the game. Notably, Shiny77 claims to have seen some gameplay and remarked only that “It’s uuuuh… something… I don’t think people will like it.”
Project Scout of course won’t be Ubisoft’s foray into battle royale games. In 2020, the company’s Montreal studio released Hyper Scape, a free-to-play first-person shooter that incorporated key elements of the popular multiplayer genre. It allowed up to 100 players to join in a free-for-all on an ever-shrinking map. Considered one of the biggest flops in gaming history, Hyper Scape failed to secure a loyal player base and ultimately shut down in 2022, less than two years after launch.
Ubisoft reportedly had at least 12 battle royal games in development at one point. All the way back in January 2023, one employee claimed that the company still hoped to dip into the success that battle royales were experiencing at the time. However, in the second half of 2022, the video game conglomerate announced the cancellation of seven titles like Splinter Cell VR and Ghost Recon Frontline. It was also believed that several other games were or had been on the chopping block, with many of them presumed to be at least some of the battle royale projects. Ubisoft had apparently taken note of the decline in battle royale player numbers.
If Project Scout is real, it may represent Ubisoft's latest attempt to establish itself in the battle royale space. Given the fierce competition it will face from established titles like Apex Legends, Fortnite, and Call of Duty: Warzone, the company is facing an uphill battle. The challenge will lie in finding a distinctive hook that sets Ubisoft's new game apart from the masses. The fate of Hyper Space can be compared to the spectular failure of Sony and Firewalk Studio's Concord. Though that game wasn't a battle royale, it still serves as an example of what can happen when a game tries to butt into an already saturated market while not distinguishing itself enough in any of the ways that matter. Hopefully, Ubisoft will have learned from previous missteps, both by itself and other companies, and will offer a game that is innovative and refreshing in what many consider to be a stagnating genre.