Ubisoft Disbands Dev Team Behind Beloved ‘Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’

Update (10/23/2024): An article posted by Eurogamer confirms everything as being accurate. Furthermore, the former Lost Crown team is hard at work on other Ubisoft projects.

Original: Allegedly, Ubisoft has disbanded the development team behind the popular Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown game. While there aren’t a whole lot of details at the moment, I can go over what’s been revealed thus far. One credible French games journalist, Gautoz, released a YouTube video discussing the situation.

Reportedly, the game’s ill-met fate had been long decided mere weeks after its release. After putting out a string of DLC updates, the higher-ups at Ubisoft allegedly decided the project wasn’t worth it against its costs. It’s also alleged that members of the development team tried to push to get a sequel approved — alongside two expansions to the base game.

Although, Ubisoft allegedly came to the conclusion that other projects the company had been working on had better “sales potential.” Further, claims were made a core justification for the sequel getting shot down was that it would cannibalize the first game’s long-term sales.

ubisoft allegedly breaks up the ‘Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’ team

Reportedly, multiple Ubisoft developers reached out to Gautoz to confirm the news. As it stands, we’ll have to wait and see if more sources will come forward to confirm or deny the rumors. However, if this news is true, it’s a horrible, disturbing state of affairs for the future of AAA game development.

It feels like it’s been one hit after the other lately. That doesn’t even begin to detail what the developers must be experiencing. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was a return to form for a franchise that had been dismissed a long time ago. Now, it seems as though the Prince of Persia IP will go back in the vault, never to be attempted again.

Many players online are touting the title as one of the best Ubisoft games to come out in recent years. Honestly, The Lost Crown was a cut above the rest. Metroidvanias are already difficult to make distinguishable among their competition in a crowded field. But The Lost Crown was special. All we can really do is hope something was misinterpreted. It’s more likely, though — considering the state of AAA game development — that devastating confirmations could be around the corner.