Ubisoft's Watch Dogs is "Completely Dead" Following Company Restructuring, Confirms Insider

According to one industry insider, Ubisoft has completely abandoned the Watch Dogs IP, even though principal photography on the upcoming Watch Dogs film wrapped over a year ago.

Ubisoft’s recent “restructuring” announcement has been an absolute disaster.

They’ve cancelled six upcoming games (including the Prince of Persia Remake), they’re planning to cut a bunch of staff, their stock price has tanked, and now employees are apparently blasting Ubisoft’s higher-ups within their internal work channels for mismanaging the company.

But hey, just in case you didn’t think things could get any worse, Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson has just revealed that Ubisoft’s semi-successful Watch Dogs franchise is “completely dead.”

This news comes via the Insider Gaming podcast, during which Henderson noted that the poor financial performance of Watch Dogs: Legion is supposedly to blame for Ubisoft’s decision to abandon the IP.

Official promotional art of Watch Dogs: Legion, Ubisoft

And yes, the Watch Dogs movie is still coming out regardless. At least, that’s what I think this Tweet from director Mathieu Turi is trying to imply.

It is also worth noting that insider Shinobi602 responded to Insider Gaming’s story by stating that the Watch Dogs IP isn’t “exactly” dead. They also later followed this up by confirming that they aren’t referring to the upcoming movie, which could mean anything, really.

Maybe that means Ubisoft is going to make another game, or maybe it means they’re planning to release Watch Dogs-branded, rose-scented shampoo. For the time being, there’s absolutely no way to know for sure.

That being said, Tom Henderson is clearly deep in the Ubisoft trenches right now, because he’s been leaking a new Ubisoft story every 24 hours at this point. For that reason alone, I’m inclined to trust his source on this one.

Personally, even though I’ve never been the biggest Watch Dogs fan (I’m more of a Sleeping Dogs fan, myself), I do think it would be a shame if this is true. The first Watch Dogs was fine, but Watch Dogs 2 absolutely slapped, so it seems oddly misguided for Ubisoft to abandon the franchise outright due to Watch Dogs: Legion’s underwhelming sales numbers.

Then again, this is Ubisoft we’re talking about. They’ve (officially) been working on Beyond Good and Evil 2 for over a decade now and have absolutely nothing to show for it, but decided to cancel the Prince of Persia remake over that money sink. I wouldn’t trust Ubisoft’s upper management to run me a bath, let alone run a whole company.