The Division 2 was recently due to get its season 11 update. Instead, the entire game ground to a halt after the tool the development team relies on to issue updates went completely offline. The damage is now being repaired, with “compensation” planned as players wait for the promised update. How did it happen? Ubisoft’s explanation is a fascinating window into the challenges and pitfalls of live-service game maintenance.
“In preparing for Season 11, we began experiencing a series of delays in our localization process, consequently impacting the experience for many players around the world,” The Division 2 development team announced on February 3. “Therefore, after much discussion, we have made the difficult decision to move the release of Season 11 and the livestream to a later date.”
It seemed like a momentary hiccup and a temporary delay, but on Thursday the developers behind the Tom Clancy loot shooter revealed the damage went beyond just a single update. “This past Saturday, in the process of creating the update which would resolve the issue, we encountered an error that brought down the build generation system for The Division 2,” the team tweeted early yesterday. “As a result, we cannot update the game until this system has been rebuilt.”
Normally, when a new Division 2 season is delayed, Ubisoft simply extends the existing one, looping the weekly mission and loot changes until the new content is ready to go live. “Unfortunately, this is not possible in the current situation,” the team explained, “as we are unable to make server- or client-side updates until the build generation system is restored.”
Now an emergency fix has solved that issue, but Season 11 is still nowhere in sight. We have successfully created and deployed a server-side update,” the team tweeted on Friday. “This is now live and extends Season 10 content. We deeply appreciate your support and patience! More news about Season 11 and in-game compensation will be shared at a later date.”
A great live-service culling at the start of 2023 killed a bunch of online games, but The Division 2 wasn’t one of them. Despite a period of malaise two years into its post-launch life, Ubisoft announced a series of modest updates coming to the game in a new content roadmap published last year. With some players still roaming the streets of a post-apocalyptic Washington D.C., Ubisoft has kept the lights on as it waits for a free-to-play spin-off, The Division Heartland, to finally ship. Whether we’ll ever get The Division 3 remains to be seen.