Ubisoft has canned its Facebook strategy game
Ghost Recon: Commander, leading to major layoffs at developer Loot Drop.
Loot Drop co-founder Brenda Romero
wrote on Twitter, "Sad news. Today,
Ghost Recon: Commander was cancelled. As a result, we laid off a team of kick-ass developers. If you have openings, ping me."
We confirmed the news with Ubisoft. A spokesperson for Ubi told
Pocket Gamer, "
Ghost Recon: Commander will unfortunately be discontinued because the gameplay mechanics did not resonate with the core gamer audience."
Ubisoft had previously pegged this turn-based tactical shooter as a "gamer's game on Facebook".
According to App Data, the game received about 20,000 daily active users. A game like
FarmVille or
Draw Something receives millions.
The French publisher told us that "this decision does not reflect a change of strategy for any of Ubisoft's other social games currently in development or operation." Ubisoft's most popular Facebook games include
The Smurfs & Co,
CSI: Crime City, and
House M.D. - Critical Cases.
Ubisoft also told us that "we will continue to operate
Ghost Recon: Commander from now until the end of the calendar year with monetization removed." You can play it
here.
Ghost Recon: Commander is not the only Facebook game to get the chop, incidentally. Following a round of staff layoffs at Zynga, the social gaming giant's CEO, Mark Pincus,
said his company would be "sunsetting 13 older games" and "significantly reducing our investment in
The Ville".
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