Ubisoft confirmed today that Project Q (opens in new tab), the "PvP battle arena game" that was officially announced for 2022 after numerous leaks, has been canceled. This continues a wave of hardship for the publisher, which has canceled three unannounced projects and postponed Skull & Bones (opens in new tab) at least six times, and the news has cut the studio's stock price in half in the last six months.

Project Q first came to light in September 2021 through a leak in the GeForce Now database, which contained a number of unreleased game titles. The list also included four games with the "Project" codename, allegedly made by Ubisoft: Ubisoft blamed the whole matter on "speculation (open in new tab)," which was of course wrong. Since the publisher was the only one making noise about the matter, everyone's attention was immediately focused on Ubisoft's listed games.

In April 2022, more information about the game was leaked on Exputer (opens in new tab), at which point Ubisoft threw in the towel.

"Introducing ‍Code Name Project Q. Team Battle Arena, where players can truly have their own unique experience!"

"The game is in early development and will continue to be tested.

"By the way, this is not a battle royale. The game has various PvP modes and has only one goal: fun!"

Unfortunately, it looks like that fun is over. After the cancellation was reported yesterday on Insider Gaming (opens in new tab), Ubisoft confirmed to VGC (opens in new tab) that Project Q is no longer in development.

"We can confirm that we do not support the development of Project Q in order to focus on our priority projects.

Ubisoft announced last week that it had cancelled development of three unannounced projects (opens in new tab) in order to focus resources on its existing brands and live services, and more broadly, to rebuild its badly underperforming performance. My guess is that Project Q is not one of them, since it was previously announced, but since the use of a codename means that it is not entirely clear, it is arguable that it could be one of the three games whose cancellation was confirmed last week.

We have reached out to Ubisoft to clarify the situation and will update if we hear back, but in any case, this is even worse news for Ubisoft. Project Q probably wasn't on anyone's list of most anticipated games (open in new tab), but it was at least known, and the development process was good enough for Ubisoft to talk about it and accept playtest applications. However, Ubisoft's reputation has already been badly damaged, mainly due to their perceived inability to simply finish and release the game. However, Ubisoft's reputation has already been badly damaged, largely because of its perceived inability to simply complete and release games.