Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Developer Disbanded by Ubisoft

Not a week goes by without Ubisoft drawing attention for all the wrong reasons, leading some to speculate whether the continuous stream of controversies surrounding the studio is a clever marketing strategy. This week, we've got ourselves two brand-new kerfuffles for the price of one, as in addition to canceling the three-day early access privilege for the Assassin's Creed Shadows Collector's Edition, the company also reportedly disbanded Ubisoft Montpellier, the team behind Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, an action-adventure metroidvania released earlier this year.

According to YouTuber Gautoz, who spoke with several developers from Ubisoft Montpellier, the team was disbanded due to higher-ups being dissatisfied with the metroidvania's financial performance, first revealed to be underwhelming two weeks after the game's release when Ubisoft stated that only 300,000 players had purchased the game – a figure too low for a AAA studio. Furthermore, the report revealed that executives refused to greenlight a sequel to The Lost Crown, partly due to concerns that it could negatively impact sales of the first game.

Even though it's now commonplace to lambast Ubisoft and its devs for anything and everything, the report comes out as disheartening, particularly since Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, unlike some of the other Ubisoft releases, was actually a good game, praised by the community for its gameplay and awarded with strong 8/10s by players and critics alike.

Surprisingly, this story has a silver lining. Unlike what you might have expected, the developers themselves were not fired but simply reassigned to other projects, according to YouTuber Caith_Sith, who reportedly also spoke to one of The Lost Crown's developers. As stated by Caith, Ubisoft Montpellier wasn't closed and its employees weren't terminated. Instead, the team was dissolved and reassigned to work on other projects within the studio.

The news comes in the wake of Assassin's Creed Shadows getting delayed to February 2025, Star Wars Outlaws and Skull and Bones showing disappointing financial results, and Tencent considering purchasing the studio, so even though the Montpellier office managed to avoid layoffs, its disbandment still adds to the turbulence Ubisoft is currently experiencing.

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