Ubisoft scraps its Far Cry extraction shooter and bets on player-built stories instead
Ubisoft has cancelled Maverick, its Far Cry extraction shooter that had been in development since 2023, and replaced it with something quite different. The new project, codenamed Kodiak, is an open-world first-person shooter built around stories created by other players. With extraction shooters piling up failures across the industry, Ubisoft is pivoting toward a user-generated content model closer to Roblox or Fortnite than to Escape from Tarkov.
The extraction problem
Maverick was never officially announced, but Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson — who first reported the game in 2023 — now confirms it's dead. The decision fits a broader pattern: the extraction shooter genre has consistently stumbled at launch. Bungie's Marathon was delayed indefinitely after a rough alpha, with a new target of March 2026, per GameSpot. Ubisoft itself already has a multiplayer graveyard — XDefiant was shut down, Hyper Scape never found its audience — making another online-only bet a hard sell internally.
What Kodiak actually is
Kodiak keeps Far Cry's signature open-world FPS structure but centres gameplay on player-driven narrative systems: players interact with storylines built by other players. Think less "team wipe, extract, repeat" and more a living world shaped by a creator community. Vantage Studios head Charlie Guillemot sees enough potential in the concept that, if Kodiak succeeds, its ideas could carry forward into future mainline entries.
The UGC model is proven at scale — Roblox and Fortnite's creative mode have demonstrated that player-made content can sustain massive audiences. But Ubisoft has never built or maintained that kind of creator ecosystem, and the gap between having the systems and cultivating an engaged community is where live-service games tend to fail.
The Far Cry timeline
Kodiak is in development alongside Far Cry 7, codenamed Blackbird — a more traditional entry set in an Alaskan national park with survival mechanics and co-op heists. Blackbird has had its share of production trouble but is now reportedly on track, with a release window shifted from Holiday 2026 to Summer 2027. That puts it in a crowded fiscal window alongside Assassin's Creed Hexe and a reported Ghost Recon title.
No platforms, release window, or monetisation details have been confirmed for Kodiak. Given it's still early in development, a launch before 2028 seems unlikely.
