French video gaming company Ubisoft has announced it will close the servers for four free-to-play games. ‘Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Phantoms‘ (GRP) will go offline on December 1. The 2011 game was Ubisoft’s maiden free-to-play venture in the market.
A Ubisoft community manager for Europe as well as the Ghost Recon Phantoms development team confirmed the news. In the past, Free-to-play games inspired by famous franchises were a huge trend, but that time has passed.
The titles ‘The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot,’ ‘Tom Clancy’s Endwar Online and Might & Magic: Duel of Champions’ will suffer the same fate a little earlier on October 31. Like Ubisoft, this week Microsoft canceled ‘Halo Online’ in Russia.
Ubisoft stopped game sales and disabled the in-game shop. However, players will be able to buy in-game items with virtual currency until final closure. Web sites, forums and social media channels related to the four games will go offline.
GRP wasn’t successful enough
In a statement on the Ghost Recon Phantoms website, developers behind the title said it represented a major endeavor since the project’s inception seven years ago.
The team was happy to have released a different version of the franchise, while the studio thanked fans for their support.
The Ubisoft community manager explained in a surprisingly frank FAQ that, according to the game’s terms of service, the company will not offer refunds to players who still have a balance of credits when the game shuts down. Phantoms credits will not get transferred to another Ubisoft title.
The GRP team also said there would be no layoffs as a result of the upcoming shutdown, assuring Phantom employees have already moved to new projects at Ubisoft.
As for why GRP is closing, the team argued the game was simply not as successful as they had expected it would be.
Ubisoft said Ghost Recon: Wildlands will feature a massive open-world map
A movie based on the franchise is in under development, and Michael Bay is going to produce it. Back in March, Ubisoft announced it was developing one of the studio’s biggest PC and console games, without going into further detail.
Ghost Recon’s next installment was long said to be a version of Phantoms for Wii U, but it never came out. Instead, Ghost Recon Wildlands is set to continue the series in 2017.
It will be playable on Microsoft Windows (PC) like Phantoms but also on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Ubisoft has said Wildlands will be one of the biggest open world games the studio has ever published. It will include a wide variety of environments such as mountains, forests, deserts and salt pans.
Source: GameSpot
