Back in 2024, it was reported that Ubisoft was working on its own social-sim game inspired by the likes of Nintendo’s highly-successful Animal Crossing and Mojang’s Minecraft. Said game was to feature a “voxel art style” whose NPCs, called “Matterlings”, resembled Funko Pops, and whose world was made up of different biomes with unique inhabitants that could interact with players or each other in a variety of ways. Players would be able to gather resources and building materials, allowing them to craft things in-game- if a player wanted to make something out of ice, they would have to travel to an ice-biome to retrieve materials for such a project. Patrick Redding was announced as Alterra’s creative director while Fabien Lhéraud acted as lead producer.
While off to a small but ambitious start, the project would continue for three years until today, where it was announced earlier that the project had been cancelled by Ubisoft. The staff working on the game were promptly sent home, with no stated layoffs as said staff were instead moved onto different projects within the company. This comes in the wake of other layoffs and cancelled Ubisoft projects, including the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake. One studio, Ubisoft Halifax, was closed weeks after its staff had successfully unionized, with CWA Canada looking to pursue legal recourse as result.
This is not out of nowhere, but instead comes following a business partnership formed with Tencent which led to a massive shake-up in its organization and structure as a company, resulting in the aforementioned layoffs and cancellations that left many players shocked and disappointed. A Ubisoft spokesperson had this to say to Gamespot regarding these changes: “As part of our portfolio management approach and evolving creative house-led model, we continuously assess projects at every stage of development to ensure alignment with our strategic priorities, quality ambitions, and long-term market potential. Projects that no longer meet these expectations may be discontinued”.