Ghost Recon Frontline was cancelled this July, although we didn't get much of an explanation. The news was shared during an earnings call, in which Ubisoft also cancelled a VR Splinter Cell game, and two other unannounced games. Now, however, we finally have a good idea of why these projects were scrapped.According to senior developer Fawzi Mesmar, playtesting found that Ghost Recon Frontline wasn't "meeting player expectations". Ubisoft apparently found that many fans were disappointed with the direction of the live service, missing Ghost Recon's usual stealth-based gameplay. This reaction resulted in Frontline's cancellation, and it's not known if Ubisoft has anything else planned for the series. “Following the feedback that we've collected from our players in the playtest, we found that that game basically was not meeting the players' expectations,” said Mesmar, speaking to Axios Gaming. Mesmar also revealed that Ubisoft very much took notice of Frontline's negative reception as soon as it was revealed last October. The announcement trailer is still live, and currently sits at 8,700 dislikes to 2,000 likes.
Despite this, Ubisoft was eager to keep development going until Frontline was ready for public testing. "[We] wanted to also collect the feedback of the players once they've experienced the game, not just the messaging around the game," Mesmar says, hoping that Frontline would win players over with its battle royale gameplay.
It seems that Ubisoft isn't in a hurry to explain what was so bad about Frontline's public tests, but whatever the case, it was rough enough to warrant cancelling the whole game.
It's not all doom and gloom for Ghost Recon fans, however. When it was announced that support is being pulled from Breakpoint, it was also reported that another Ghost Recon game is in the works. With any luck, this will reflect the feedback Ubisoft received during Frontline's development.