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A banner for The Division: Definitive Edition was seen at the FPS Day X event in Japan recently, confirming some game rumours.

Coming hot off of last year’s success with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Ubisoft could be looking to another franchise to focus its efforts this year. Recently, a banner at the FPS Day X event in Japan featured poster art for The Division: Definitive Edition, along with Division 2 updates. While The Division 3 is still in development, the original game may still have a lot to offer its players.

Tom Clancy’s The Division is a 2016 online-only action RPG featuring multiplayer co-op and PvP. Some credit the game with pioneering and influencing the extraction shooter genre through core mechanics such as looting, crafting, PvPvE, survival elements (hunger, cold), and the tense goal of extracting a specific item. Although many would say Escape From Tarkov is the first true extraction shooter.

Spotted by domen0204 on X, the banner featured the poster for the upcoming Definitive Edition, with many visitors hoping the developers would finally make an official announcement during its 10th Anniversary celebrations. Another image by the X user showed that The Division 2‘s devs confirmed a ‘Realism mode’ coming in March 2026. It also contains some merch of some kind for the game.

Here is what we already know about The Division 2’s Realism Mode: it will feature action-focused gameplay, reduced time to kill, and realistic weapon damage based on bullet calibre. These changes allow players to immerse themselves in the game in a brand new way. In game-changing fashion, the mode will also introduce a reduced user interface, a limited HUD, no health regeneration, reduced cooldowns, and more. Developers also confirmed this is only the “first glimpse of the celebrations ahead,” with “more surprises” still to come.

FPS Day X attendees were able to try the new Realism Mode, and the Ubisoft Japan channel also posted a video outlining the feature. Creative director Yannick Banchereau said in the video: “Realism Mode is your chance to experience The Division 2 like never before, raw and unforgiving.” The only catch is that the mode will be available only during a special anniversary mini-season beginning in March. Players must also own the Warlords of New York expansion to access it.

Something all players can enjoy is the new anniversary crossover taking place with three other Tom Clancy series. The outfits, based on characters from Rainbow Six Siege X, Splinter Cell, and Ghost Recon, can be unlocked through the Anniversary Pass, although full details have not yet been revealed. However, as with last year’s Payday collaboration, the content could be free and progression-based through the Anniversary Pass.

Ubisoft series such as Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed, and Rainbow Six Siege have carried the publisher for some time. However, The Division series should not be overlooked. As noted earlier, the first game incorporated many extraction shooter elements, helping pave the way for more recent titles such as Escape From Tarkov and Arc Raiders.

Former Assassin's Creed director Alexandre Amancio has shared his thoughts about AAA development, suggesting we need "smaller teams" and admitting that big-budget developers cannot "solve a problem by throwing people at it".

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January is the month that, where I live, in the south of England, everyone gets serious again. All the paraphernalia of Christmas - all the merriment and cheer and colourful lighting - is cleared away in favour of sobering goals for the year ahead. It's never something that's appealed strongly to me, making goals, but I do feel the allure of wiping a slate clean and starting again. It's like a run in a roguelike game, I like to think. Time for a new me.

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It's been another strange, difficult, and yet somehow also brilliant year for video games in 2025. Triple-A releases have been sparse again, compared to the boom times of old, with a great big GTA 6-shaped hole left in the final few months of the year. And yet once again, every gap left by the established order has been filled twice over with something brilliantly new.

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Rainbow Six Siege is still struggling today after hackers gave out "billions" in in-game currency, forcing Ubisoft to briefly "intentionally" shut down the game.

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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Ubisoft just spent the tail end of December 2025 in a total defensive crouch. What started as a weird glitch in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege turned into a full-blown backend catastrophe that forced the publisher to pull the plug on global servers for over 24 hours.¹ This wasn’t a standard “the servers are acting up” situation; this was a fundamental compromise of their internal logic.

The Anatomy of the Breach

The chaos became undeniable on December 27, 2025. Players logging in were greeted with a surreal scene: their accounts were suddenly flush with approximately 2 billion R6 Credits—the game’s premium currency—and virtually every cosmetic item in the game was unlocked. For context, 15,000 credits usually retail for about $100, making the injected value per player essentially infinite.

Beyond the “Christmas come early” vibes, the attackers gained administrative control over the game’s moderation tools. They didn’t stop at credits:

• Automated Chaos: The global ban ticker, usually reserved for catching cheaters, started broadcasting cryptic messages and Shaggy lyrics.
• Account Manipulation: Attackers were actively banning and unbanning players at random, effectively gatekeeping the game from legitimate users.
• Total Shutdown: By 11:00 AM UTC, Ubisoft realized the house was on fire and took Siege and its Marketplace entirely offline to prevent the total collapse of their economy.

The Technical Failure: MongoBleed and Weak APIs

While Ubisoft has been tight-lipped about the exact entry point, security researchers have pointed to a critical vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-14847, colloquially known as MongoBleed. This exploit allowed threat actors to infiltrate internal databases and Git repositories.

The consensus among the technical crowd is that Ubisoft’s backend infrastructure lacked the necessary authorization checks on key API endpoints, allowing the attackers to masquerade as high-level administrators.

The Rollback and Current Status

Ubisoft’s solution was a scorched-earth policy. They initiated a global rollback of all player data to its state before December 27, 10:49 UTC.

• Financial Impact: Every transaction made during the breach window was nuked.While Ubisoft confirmed players wouldn’t be banned for spending the “fake” credits, the items bought with them have been removed.
• The “Two-Week” Recovery: As of December 31, 2025, servers are largely back online, but the Marketplace remains shuttered. Many players are reporting missing legitimate items—collateral damage of the rollback—which Ubisoft claims will take up to two weeks to rectify.
• Infrastructure Stress: Users are still seeing “unplanned issues” on the official status page as the services ramp back up to handle the holiday player load.

The reality here is pretty grim for a triple-A studio. Managing a live-service game for a decade only to have the entire backend subverted by a known database vulnerability suggests a massive gap in their security-aware culture. It’s a reminder that even the biggest players in the industry are often running on legacy systems held together by duct tape and hope.

The post End of the Year: Ubisoft MongoDB Meltdown appeared first on Game Reviews, News, Videos & More for Every Gamer – PC, PlayStation, Xbox in 2026.

Ubisoft, which received €1.16bn investment in 2025 from Tencent,  have closed its studio in Halifax, Canada, with the shutdown coming just a few weeks after the employees voted to unionise.  The studio had been running for over ten years.

“Over the past 24 months, Ubisoft has undertaken company-wide actions to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and reduce costs,” said a Ubisoft spokesperson. “As part of this, Ubisoft has made the difficult decision to close its Halifax studio. 71 positions will be affected. We are committed to supporting all impacted team members during this transition with resources, including comprehensive severance packages and additional career assistance.” 

Employees at Ubisoft Halifax formed a union under CWA Canada, which also includes employees from Bethesda Montreal, on December 18th, 2025. 74% of the staff voted in favour of the move.

“In an era marked by industry-wide uncertainty, studio closures, layoffs, and increasing instability, we want to make clear our commitment to one another and to our craft,” they stated at the time.

CWA Canada has not made any official comment about the timing of the two events, but is “demanding information”. “Today’s news is devastating,” commented CWA Canada president, Carmel Smyth. “We will pursue every legal recourse to ensure that the rights of these workers are respected and not infringed in any way.”

Rockstar Games was recently accused of ‘union busting’ after firing 30 employees who belonged to a union, stating that the employees were fired for sharing company information in a public forum. This has been denied by the staff.

Following the dismissals last week, the IWGB branded it as “a brazen act of illegal union busting”, with IWGB president Alex Marshall calling it “a calculated attack on workers organising for a collective voice and to improve their difficult working conditions.”

Source: GameDeveloper

Update 30/12/25 – A Ubisoft spokesperson has issued a statement with some further details and reassurances over the reports of hacking affecting Rainbow Six Siege X over the weekend.

With the game back online, Ubisoft’s investigation is ongoing, but notes that actual effects were able to be rolled back and that neither personal data or game source code was compromised.

Here’s the statement:

Rainbow Six Siege recently experienced a cyberattack causing limited disruptions, including fake ban notifications and unauthorized credit grants. While we are continuing our investigation, as of this time, there is no indication that any personal data nor source code was compromised as a result of this incident. To help resolve the issue, we initiated a temporary server shutdown and rolled back the unauthorized credit grants. Rainbow Six Siege is currently back online and players are returning to the game.    

The original story follows.

Rainbow Six Siege X is now back online after the servers were shut down for over two days while Ubisoft dealt with a massive security breach.  In the evening of 26th December players began to notice billions of in-game currency being added to their accounts and super rare skins being dropping into their inventories. Other players were banned, and some were unbanned.

Ubisoft have now rolled back all the data so players should have the correct amount of in-game credit, known as Renown. They state that players may find themselves in a queue to get back in to the game.

The event has kicked off a war of words between various hacking groups who are claiming they are responsible, and also that one groups have stolen the source code for every Ubisoft game. These claims seem to be an exaggeration and probably not true.

However, there is evidence to suggest that Ubisoft were not hacked at all. It is reported that Ubisoft had outsourced helpdesk support to a company in India and that an employee there was bribed to give “Panel Access” to a third party. This then gave the third party access to user accounts, ban functions and other facilities. If this is true then Ubisoft were not hacked, it was bribery and human corruption that caused the issues.

It is also reported that another group is contacting people on Telegram claiming they have their personal details from hacking Ubisoft, and they are demanding money. This appears to be a scam and they have no connection to the group that breached the Rainbow Six servers. Ubisoft have, so far, not stated that any user data was breached.

Ubisoft overhauled the decade-old tactical shooter in June of this year, renaming it Rainbow Six Siege X, and added a whole host of technical improvements, as well as transitioning the game to a free-to-play model.

Rainbow Six is also one of three games hived off to a separate Ubisoft company, along with Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry.

Source: thecybersecguru.com

Ubisoft announced Wednesday it will close its Ubisoft Halifax studio and lay off 71 people. Ubisoft's closure of the Assassin's Creed: Rebellion and Rainbow Six Mobile studio comes just weeks after a group of 60 employees voted to unionize with Communications Workers of America's Canadian affiliate, CWA Canada. Seventy-four percent of the staff voted yes to unionize and create a wall-to-wall union including producers, designers, artists, testers, and researchers.

CWA Canada Local 30111, the chapter the Ubisoft Halifax workers joined, also includes more than a hundred workers at Bethesda Game Studios.

"Over the past 24 months, Ubisoft has undertaken company-wide actions to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and reduce costs," a Ubisoft spokesperson said in a statement to Aftermath. "As part of this, Ubisoft has made the difficult decision to close its Halifax studio. 71 positions will be affected. We are committed to supporting all impacted team members during this transition with resources, including comprehensive severance packages and additional career assistance."

The Ubisoft spokesperson did not specifically address the closure's relation—or not—to the recent union vote.

CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth said in a statement to Aftermath the union will "pursue every legal recourse to ensure that the rights of these workers are respected and not infringed in any way." The union said in a news release that it's illegal in Canada for companies to close businesses because of unionization. That’s not necessarily what happened here, according to the news release, but the union is "demanding information from Ubisoft about the reason for the sudden decision to close."

"We will be looking for Ubisoft to show us that this had nothing to do with the employees joining a union," former Ubisoft Halifax programmer and bargaining committee member Jon Huffman said in a statement. "The workers, their families, the people of Nova Scotia, and all of us who love video games made in Canada, deserve nothing less."

Ubisoft Halifax started as Longtail Studios, which was founded in the early 2000s by Ubisoft cofounder Gérard Guillemot. In 2010, several studio members were absorbed into Ubisoft, and by 2015, Ubisoft had acquired Longtail Studios entirely. That's when it became Ubisoft Halifax. Before joining Ubisoft, the studio was best known for its work on the Rocksmith franchise; under Ubisoft, it focused squarely on mobile games. Ubisoft Halifax was quickly removed from the Ubisoft website on Wednesday. IGN reported in 2023 that Longtail Studios tried to unionize in 2008, but ultimately failed. 

Ubisoft has been cutting costs over the past several years: laying off staff, canceling games, and shutting down studios. In November, Ubisoft shared in its earnings report that it intends to continue to reduce its fixed costs—to reduce costs by an additional €100 million by the 2027 fiscal year—on top of the €200 million reduction it had already enacted. Part of that reduction was a decrease of roughly 1,500 employees in the 12 months prior to the November earnings report. Not all of those departures were layoffs, however.

Ubisoft required a $1.25 billion investment from Tencent last year, too, to spin off the company's most successful franchises: Rainbow Six Siege, Far Cry, and Assassin's Creed. That initiative is called Vantage Studios, led by Charlie Guillemot and Christophe Derennes. "Vantage Studios represents a first step in Ubisoft's ongoing transformation," Ubisoft said in a news release from October.

It's been over two years since Ubisoft Massive confirmed that it would be making The Division 3, and that series creator Julian Gerighty would be at the forefront of the project. Since then, Ubisoft has released major updates and expansions for The Division 2, and at Gamescom 2025, we even got a major reveal of what the company has planned for the franchise, with a new survival extraction game called The Division 2: Survivors and an upcoming mobile MMO title called The Division Resurgence. As for The Division 3? Ubisoft did not mention it at the time, but during yesterday's […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/the-division-3-in-production-will-have-as-big-an-impact-as-division-1-ubisoft-massive/

James Cameron's big blue aliens are back in theatres in Avatar: Fire and Ash and Ubisoft is piggybacking on the film with some new Avatar content of their own. Not a full new game this time around, but rather a major expansion, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora - From the Ashes. This DLC offers a new campaign that introduces the violent Mangkwan tribe from Cameron's latest movie, although it isn't entirely standalone, as you still need to own the base Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora game to play it. The expansion arrived shortly after a major Frontiers of Pandora update, which added […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/avatar-frontiers-of-pandora-from-the-ashes-dlc-hands-on/

The Wednesday letters page asks when the next PS5 State of Play will be, as one reader sticks up for Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Bad idea
I’m always fascinated to read about really bad games but the problem is that, unlike a bad movie, most people never really get to play them. You can play games you don’t like, sure, but you’ve really got to be skipping your homework to end up buying the video equivalent of The Room by accident.

I don’t think even GC or most reviewers play the absolute worst games, because what would be the point? It’d just be some hentai rubbish on the Switch eShop or a broken indie game on Steam. Never anything as interesting as MindsEye, which I’d have to pay real money to experience, before presumably finding out that the reviews are truthful.

I’ve been trying to think of the worst game I’ve actually paid any money for and I think it must be The Good Life, which I bought because I really liked Deadly Premonition. I was hoping it would at least be so bad it’s good, but it was just boring and broken. There was nothing entertaining about it at all, which I guess is probably true of MindsEye too… but that thought still fascinates me.
Badgerman

One to go
Never mind about the first Nintendo Direct of 2026, I’m waiting to see the first State of Play. We know that Xbox has something planned for the early year but it’s always more of a mystery with Sony.

Although at least we have something to look forward with them this year, in Saros and Wolverine. Considering who’s making them I’m pretty certain they’re going to turn out good, which is instantly a far better line-up for the year, than Sony has had for a long time.

It’s probably just a hiccup, and I doubt Saros will sell that well, but two or three quality first party games a year is all I ask. Announce one more before the spring and this year’s quota will already be I the bag!
Purple Ranger

Shadow drop
Why are so many people saying the Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time remake is going to come out on January 16? I’ve seen that date so many times now and everyone seems to think it’s real, but as far as I can work out Ubisoft has said nothing.

I’ll be absolutely shocked if it comes out that soon, considering we haven’t ever seen anything proper of this version of it. I’d be much less shocked if the remake never happened though. It’s been so long and I’m not sure there’s really that much demand for it.

But Ubisoft did finally get Skull And Bones out, so maybe they just like to see an idea through to its end. Here’s hoping (I think, I’m a bit worried what they’ll do to it).
Demmo

GC: There was a rumour of that date before The Game Awards in December, but nothing was announced. Some people still seem to believe it though, despite the fact that it would be commerical suicide to release it in nine days, without any prior marketing.

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Hallucinating madness
I feel like the world has gone mad at the moment, when it comes to AI. Am I really the only one that notices that it doesn’t work? Sure, it can spit you out a picture of something, with gibberish language and three-armed people, but so what? Who actually wants that? Especially as it’s so obvious it is AI.

Searching on Google is now much less reliable than it used to be and ChatGPT lies and hallucinates like a drunk politician. But because it’s making some fat cats rich (it doesn’t make money itself, it’s all about the investment) we suddenly have to use it for everything.

This Sony patent about having AI watch TikTok videos to ‘learn’ how to play game is madness. Ignoring the fact that it’s clearly not going to work, why doesn’t the developer just record a run themselves and use that. It’d take them what, a few hours at most? And they’d be doing it anyway for playtesting.

It’s exactly what Nintendo did for their system which, as you rightly point out, they got bored of very quickly, presumably because nobody used it. Because why buy a game just to have the console play it for you?
The Bishop

Each to their own
I see Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is next to bottom on Metacritic’s list of Switch 2 games.

Personally, I enjoyed the delve into the detailed workings of the Switch 2.

Yes, you do need the camera to fully explore but I had that anyway.

As a great lover of the incredible build instructions of Nintendo Labo I see Welcome Tour as a very well made insight to the Switch 2.

Nintendo Life’s review of Welcome Tour is similar to what mine would be.

Happy New Year to all.
Goldenlay

Direct excitement
Nintendo hasn’t had a Direct in February for the last two years, but I think that was just because the Switch 2 was coming. They had it pretty consistently before that, so I’m hopeful they’ll do one again this year.

The reader on Tuesday was right that Mario Kart World is a very sensible and suitable launch game, but I think most long term Nintendo fans would still say that it’s a bit of a disappointment and missing that classic Nintendo magic, even if it is still ‘good’.

My hope for the Direct is not anything specific, just that it not be the minimum effort we’ve seen so far. Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza felt like the only reveals at the Switch 2 unveil, even though they weren’t. Because who ever cared about Drag x Drive or Kirby Air Riders?

We need more games to get pumped about, to make the console seem like it’s worth it, but I’m afraid we’ll just get that new single-player Splatoon game and a few more unwanted spin-offs and special editions. I realise games take longer to make nowadays but I thought Nintendo were clever enough to work around that.

I’m beginning to worry that they’re not and that this is going to be a very underwhelming generation for them.
Koffey
PS: I just remembered that new Fire Emblem game. They’ll probably talk about that too, which doesn’t seem very exciting either.

Noisy neighbours
He didn’t knock my door down, but I did have the neighbour asking if I was ‘all right’ after getting a bit overexcited with Call Of Duty a few years ago.

I hadn’t really thought of how much noise I was making, since I had my headphones on, but apparently I was ‘cussing and cursing’ and they were worried some kind of fight was going on or that I was generally just a wrong ‘un. To be honest, they were probably right.
Tez

The big five
Well, you weren’t lying about the list of top games being a depressing one. I wasn’t sure what to expect but having the exact five games be the most popular, in almost exactly the same order, from one year to the next is very worrying. What’s worse is that I doubt that it was any different going back at least… five years? Maybe more?

Even worse than that, I doubt it’ll be any different for at least that length of time in the future. Video games aren’t like movies anymore. They’re not something you do where you’re always looking for something new you haven’t played before. Now they’re just these five games, and maybe a few others, that have existed for a decade or more and will go on for so long as anyone of us can imagine.

Other games sill exist alongside them, obviously, but I worry that for younger gamers that fact is going to be increasingly ignored and that for a more casual younger person there’s absolutely no reason to bother seeking out other games that aren’t just one of the ones in the list.

And then to add another problem on top, you’ve got the fact that if something new does come along, it’s still a very similar type of game. Arc Raiders is probably the biggest new title in a while but it’s still an online shooter (and I don’t think anywhere close to Call Of Duty or anything).

It’s a very worrying state of affairs that I cannot see changing for any reason in the future.
Cranston

Inbox also-rans
I never upset a neighbour while playing a game but more than once I’ve managed to startle my cat two foot into the air when failing to beat a boss in Elden Ring. She still loves me though.
Rendel

Since Konami is trying to bring back its old games, I wish they’d do a new Yie Ar Kung-Fu. No one else ever seems to have heard of it but I have very fond memories of that on the Commodore 64.
Focus

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.

MORE: Games Inbox: When is the first Nintendo Direct of 2026?

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More details: https://gameworldobserver.com/2025/12/24/the-developers-of-rainbow-six-mobile-have-formed-a-union

More details: https://gameworldobserver.com/2025/12/16/ubisoft-acquired-the-amazon-games-montreal-studio

As a big Destiny 2 fan, I've been rather envious of my looter-shooter compatriots over in The Division land. Yes, there have been some frustrations with Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment's handling of The Division 2 and delays to its DLC timeline. But at least it's getting the one thing I and many other Destiny players want the most - a third game in the series. While there's no official sign of Destiny 3 from Bungie, we know that Massive is beavering away on The Division 3, and in a new interview, executive producer Julian Gerighty says that it's "shaping up to be a monster."

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Ubisoft says The Division 3 is "a monster" and believes it can have "as big an impact" as the first game

Whether it's the burning embers of a full-scale rebellion, attempting to survive a dangerous island controlled by thugs and pirates, or dealing with post-apocalyptic America, the Far Cry series offers some incredible FPS action that few games can recreate. From the reinvention of the formula with Far Cry 3 all the way to the latest entry with Far Cry 6, there's no shortage of open-world enjoyment here, and you can play seven of the games for just $1 / £1 - that's a deal you can't find elsewhere.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Play seven Far Cry games for just $1 with this limited-time deal

Avatar Frontiers of Pandora: From the Ashes by Ubisoft was released on December 19, 2025, just before Christmas. A game that quickly reminded me why I first fell in love with Pandora’s vivid world in 2023. While the original game had its highs and lows, this expansion offers a new story that feels personal, meaningful,…

The post Avatar Frontiers of Pandora From the Ashes Review: Stunning appeared first on Invision Game Community.