Ubisoft in Trouble, Star Wars and Avatar Studio Head Left the Company

It’s been a busy few months for David Polfeldt. He left his post as managing director at Ubisoft Massive last week, but not before interviewing in the Hitpoints newsletter about what he plans on doing next. The article says that while he originally meant to return from an extended sabbatical this past year, he decided to leave the Swedish company Massive Entertainment.

With Polfeldt departing the company, it will be interesting to see how the launch of the new Avatar game this year impacts its status as scheduled releases go on a hiatus until someone new takes over. Given its vast size, I think they’ve probably got something planned, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

Massive is known for developing the looter shooter games, both The Division and The Division 2, which have slowly withered out in player numbers after initially strong anticipation. Furthermore, the company has received an opportunity to work on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and a new Star Wars game. This has crushed all the hopes about The Division, even though the developer promised a free-to-play version of it coming out soon.

Details on the new Star Wars game are scarce at this point. It was announced as an open-world adventure taking advantage of Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine, but we haven’t heard anything about when it’ll actually take place in the timeline.