Ubisoft's Wild Arena Survivors Was Reportedly Once a Far Cry Game

Wild Arena Survivors, a mobile 40-player battle royale title that was released by Ubisoft last week, was reportedly once a Far Cry game.

The mobile game launched on September 1 and did not attract much attention from players as Ubisoft did little to no promotion of it. However, according to a mobilegamer.biz report, everything could have been different as Wild Arena Survivors was originally developed as a mobile spin-off of the Far Cry franchise.

The outlet's sources claim that during development, the title was called Far Cry: Wild Call. Wild Arena Survivors indeed features some elements, like environments and arenas with roaming animals as well as color palette and art style, reminiscent of the Far Cry franchise, in particular, the sixth part of the shooter series.

According to the report, at one point Ubisoft decided to put the game into a soft launch without Far Cry branding as a test – the publisher apparently wanted to see if the game could draw attention without mentioning the major franchise.

However, the title failed to grab the interest of the players, so Ubisoft decided not to spend money on promotion and released it a few months later without much change in the gameplay.

In addition to the information about Wild Arena Survivors' connection to the Far Cry series, the source also stated that Ubisoft's mobile titles get less attention than the company's console and PC titles, which apparently played a key role in the quiet launch of Wild Arena Survivors last week.

"You’ve got the publisher that we all know – Assassin’s Creed, Tom Clancy – and you’ve got mobile, which is the forgotten child," the source said. "Mobile has very little oversight, support or financing from the larger parent company. But obviously they’ve got some big games coming and we’ll see what happens next."