While GTA is likely the unchallenged number 1 in open-world multiplayer games, Ubisoft also wanted to establish itself there. With Watch Dogs, it was supposed to succeed, but now the brand seems to be at its end.
Why is Watch Dogs at its end? After massive restructuring at Ubisoft and the brands of the company have been somewhat categorized into houses, there has been no news from one brand: Watch Dogs.
The insider Tom Henderson now reports in the Insider Gaming podcast on YouTube that the game series is done. He says: “As far as I know at this moment, the Watch Dogs IP is completely dead […]”.
Ubisoft did not mention Watch Dogs at all in its 7-page restructuring document, so it is not assigned to any of the houses and is also not listed among the “billionaire brands” or “live experiences”. But this is hardly surprising.
Here you can watch a trailer for Watch Dogs:
1 and 0 in Watch Dogs
How was Watch Dogs successful? Following the great success of GTA 5, the open-world experts at Ubisoft wanted to create their own modern world filled with chaos, action, and plenty of sandbox atmosphere.
While Watch Dogs 1 attempted a darker setting, with part 2 it completely transitioned into a colorful world where players could experience more side and leisure missions than the main story. Particularly the mini-games and missions in co-op or even PvP were more challenging due to the “hacker” elements than just plain deathmatch on GTA servers.
The developers made good use of the theme to create their own game modes, like a type of hide-and-seek where you invade another player’s single-player world to hack them. This brought necessary innovation to stand out from the large competition.
Initially, the brand was profitable for Ubisoft. Parts 1 and 2 sold over 10 million copies each (via vgchartz.com), and the popular second part is still played daily by over 2,000 players at peak time almost 10 years after release, even though the title still costs €60. However, the series has a problem: part 3.
What is wrong with part 3? Watch Dogs: Legion, the third part of the series, took players away from America to London. However, with the change of scenery came a controversial feature: character switching. Instead of a main character, players suddenly played in Anonymous style as a legion, switching vividly between different characters.
These characters could also die, be arrested, and had individual attributes that could be needed for various missions. However, the absence of a real main character around whom the story revolves did not go down well. So exactly 3 years after its delayed release, the title sits at 56% positive reviews with nearly 11,000 ratings on Steam, labeled as “Mixed”.
Watch Dogs was originally released on October 29, 2020, on Uplay and on Steam on January 26, 2023.
For Ubisoft, the third part was probably not profitable, as the company ceased support for the game as early as January 2022, about 1.5 years after the game’s launch. According to Nexushub, the online mode “Watch Dogs Online” did not see a jump in player numbers.
Despite the popular second part of Watch Dogs, the hacker series seems to have come to an end. A final finale could come with the Watch Dogs movie. This is supposed to showcase the story from the first part of the game, but it remains unclear how it will proceed. MeinMMO author Cedric Holmeier recommends Watch Dogs 2 to shorten the waiting time until GTA 6: A game series on Steam is ideal to shorten the wait for GTA 6
