New Ubisoft Update May Be Bad News for The Division 3

A new update out of Ubisoft may be bad news for fans of The Division and the future of the series. Tom Clancy's The Division debuted back in 2016, and was followed up by a sequel, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, in 2019. Once touted as the next mega-series out of Ubisoft, The Division has failed to live up to this anticipation, but it doesn't mean it has no future. While The Division 3 has yet to be announced, it's likely inevitable, assuming The Division Heartland, an upcoming spin-off, doesn't perform so poorly it kills off the series. That said, when and if Division 3 does release, it will be missing a major player from the first two games. 

Ubisoft Massive -- the team behind the series -- just lost its studio boss, David Polfeldt, who served as a managing director on the series so far. He also served in the same role on South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Far Cry 3, and Starlink: Battle for Atlas. He's a big part of not just Ubisoft Massive, but Ubisoft as a whole, but not for much longer. 

Polfeldt has revealed that he handed in his resignation letter earlier this year, and in the coming months, after his six-month notice ends, he will leave the company. According to Polfedlt, he feels like he is no longer the right person to lead Ubisoft Massive.

"I think my philosophy and my skills work well for a certain kind of group of a certain kind of size," said Polfeldt via Nathan Brown. "I don't think I'm the right manager for what the studio has become. I'm perfectly at peace with it."

It remains to be seen how this will impact the studio. There's no guarantee it will negatively impact the studio and the games it's working on, but typically losing a studio boss has, at the very least, an impact on the studio. Again, whether it will be a negative impact, remains to be seen, but his loss will impact and change the studio.