The mobile game Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad was supposed to be something like Rainbow Six Siege for mobile. However, after a major scandal and poor performance, Ubisoft is pulling the plug after just under a year.
What happened? Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad was released on August 27, 2020, for iOS and Android. But by October 4, 2021, it was already over, and the servers were shutting down. There are no updates anymore.
What kind of game is this? The game was announced in 2020 as a kind of Rainbow Six Siege for mobile. In 5vs5 battles, you could lead characters from Rainbow Six and other Ubisoft games into battle. Thus, there were villains like El Sueño from Ghost Recon and the legendary Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell.
Scandals and Poor Performance
What are the reasons for the game’s demise? The developers made the following statement regarding the impending end of the game:
This was not an easy decision, but after reviewing several options with our teams, we concluded that this [the game] was no longer viable. We want to assure you all that we truly did our best, especially with major updates like Season 2, and working with you, our passionate community, was a truly rewarding experience!
This is what the players say: Indeed, the game was not a big hit. In the Play Store, it only has 3.3 stars with over 65,000 ratings (via Google Play). Criticisms include that players have to grind extensively to unlock new heroes or spend a lot of money, which is deemed Pay2Win since heroes like Sam Fisher are so overpowered. Other players complain that the game runs unstable and has various annoying bugs.
Additionally, the game caused a scandal early on. The evil terrorist group Umbra, which you fight in the game, has a logo that looks very similar to the symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement. This caused a lot of trouble, and in the end, Ubisoft had to apologize and change the symbol.
Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad is thus another dead game that will not survive 2021. It joins the graveyard of dead games, where it has good company, as numerous games have left us early. You can find out who else was affected last year in our list of dead games 2020.
