Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad is closing. It’s the mobile game that coopted BLM imagery

July 22, 2021

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In 2020, Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad had a difficult start. It teased Splinter Cell fans and then disappointed them by bringing back Sam Fisher. But not in the new Splinter Cell title that many have been requesting for years but as a character in a mobile tactical game. Then it decided to use a raised fist as a symbol for the game’s villains, a faceless, evil cabal hiding behind protesters demanding social and economic justice, a decision that ultimately led to an apology for the “insensitive and harmful” use of imagery related to historically important movements including Black Lives Matter.

And after all that trouble, the game didn’t even make it a year: Ubisoft announced today that it has halted development of the game, and that the servers will shut down on October 4.

“This was not an easy decision. However, after discussing multiple options with our teams we came to the conclusion it wasn’t sustainable,” Elite Squad wrote. “We want you to know that we gave everything, especially with major updates like Season 2. It was an amazing experience to work alongside you, our passionate community.”

Ubisoft stated that the game will still be available as normal (with no updates) until October 4. They also expressed their hope that players would “stick around and have fun reaching Level 70 and unlocking every soldier you can before we say good-bye.”

Elite Squad is a mobile game, but its closure is broadly interesting because of Ubisoft’s relatively new interest in free-to-play games. The company said in May that free-to-play games represent “a great opportunity to meaningfully expand the audience of our biggest franchises,” and it’s taken action on that front with games including Hyper Scape, Roller Champions, The Division: Heartland, and the recently announced XDefiant–which, rather like Elite Squad, mashes up up various Tom Clancy properties into a single, not-especially-coherent shooter.

There’s no indication of a connection between the incidents, but the Elite Squad closure announcement comes less than two months after the departure of Charlie Guillemot, the co-head of developer Ubisoft Owlient. Charlie Guillemot is also the Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot’s son. I have reached out to Ubisoft and will update this post if I get a response.