Ubisoft has reportedly restarted development on Project U, according to a well-known industry insider. This alleged reboot suggests that the mysterious project has returned to the drawing board after five years of work.
Project U was initially announced in September 2022 as a "session-based" co-op shooter. Shortly after, Ubisoft held the first playtest, available only to PC players in Western Europe. Although additional tests followed over the years, Ubisoft has shared little about the game since its debut announcement.
Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson now reports that Ubisoft has rebooted the development of Project U, citing sources close to the company. According to these sources, Ubisoft decided to scrap the existing version of the game and start fresh in March 2024. This decision came shortly after Skull and Bones debuted to lackluster reviews, though that release is not believed to have directly influenced Project U, which is also a live-service project. Despite the reset, *Project U* is still believed to be in active development.
Ubisoft reportedly chose to restart Project U due to concerns about its replayability, which surfaced after multiple rounds of closed testing. The latest of these tests took place in early February 2024 and highlighted issues with sustaining player engagement. Despite these concerns, the core gameplay—where ten teams of four players battle waves of robot invaders culminating in a boss fight—received positive feedback from testers
Rather than canceling Project U, Ubisoft reportedly opted to reboot it with a new team, according to Henderson. Ubisoft Annecy, the studio behind Riders Republic, is said to no longer be involved in the project, though the new studio leading Project U has yet to be disclosed. Directors Damien Kieken and Mathieu Granjon have both moved on to other roles; Kieken’s LinkedIn profile indicates he joined EA’s DICE in November 2024, while Henderson reports that Granjon has transitioned to work on an Assassin’s Creed project.
The reason why Ubisoft is still interested in pursuing Project U supposedly stems from it being bullish on PvE shooters. Decision makers at the company have reportedly internally cited the immense success of Helldivers 2 as evidence that the market is currently fairly receptive to quality co-op shooters. But now that Project U is being rebooted, there's no way of telling whether this will still be the case by the time it's ready to be released. After all, modern AAA development cycles now take around five years on average—and that's for games that already have a studio attached to them, which Project U might not at the moment.