Massive Entertainment / Ubisoft Massive

Massive Entertainment / Ubisoft Massive is a developer.

Massive Entertainment / Ubisoft Massive Webpage, Facebook

A Swedish studio that has been owned by Ubisoft since 2008. The Massive team creates PC and console games. Its most famous works include the strategy game World in Conflict and the Tom Clancy's The Division series. The studio also developed its own Snowdrop Engine.

History

The studio was founded in 1997 by Martin Walfisz. Massive Entertainment's first work took three years to complete; Ground Control, the strategy game, didn't appear on PC until 2000. A few months later, the title received the Dark Conspiracy expansion.

Under Vivendi Games' Wings

In 2002, Vivendi Games, then known as Vivendi Universal Games, announced that it had acquired the studio. Under the new ownership, the team created a sequel to its debut project; Ground Control 2: Operation Exodus was released in 2004.

The studio's third project followed three years later. Another strategy game, World in Conflict, transported players to an alternate Cold War world. The game was warmly received and, like the original Ground Control, received an expansion pack – World in Conflict: Soviet Assault.

Acquisition by Ubisoft

In August 2008, following the fusion of Vivendi Games and Activision, the studio's new parent company, Activision Blizzard, decided to sell Massive Entertainment. In November, Ubisoft became the studio's new owner. In March 2009, Martin Walfisz stepped down as the CEO of Massive Entertainment.

Under the new ownership, the team temporarily served as a support studio for projects such as Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Far Cry 3 and Just Dance Now.

In the meantime, however, the studio was working on its next major project, which was released in 2013: Tom Clancy's The Division. This online shooter with RPG elements debuted in 2016 and, despite its challenges, was successful enough to allow Massive to not only grow into one of the main Ubisoft's studios but also create a sequel - Tom Clancy's The Division 2, released in 2019.

In March 2017, we learned that the team was entrusted with creating a video game based on the Avatar movies. The action-adventure title, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, was announced four years later. Finally, in 2021, Lucasfilm Games announced that, through a partnership with Ubisoft, the studio would develop an open-world game set in the Star Wars universe. In 2023, the enigmatic project was revealed to be Star Wars Outlaws.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora debuted on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in December 2023. It was quite warmly received by both players and reviewers. According to Metacritic, the average rating given by industry media was between 72-75/100; the average rating from users was 7.7/10.

Meanwhile, in September 2023, Ubisoft officially confirmed that Massive Entertainment would develop Tom Clancy's The Division 3. Previously, the brand had started to take on a life of its own. It appeared on mobile devices (as Tom Clancy's The Division: Resurgence) as well as received a free spin-off, Tom Clancy's The Division: Heartland, the development of which was entrusted to the Red Storm team.

Snowdrop Engine

Massive Entertainment works on not only video games but also proprietary technology. The Snowdrop Engine, the development of which started in 2009, allows for the generation of high-quality graphics and provides features such as a realistic day-night cycle, global volumetric lighting, dynamic shadows, advanced particle effects, and procedurally generated destruction.

The first project to utilize this technology was Tom Clancy's The Division. In subsequent years, the engine has proven itself in productions spanning a wide range of genres, from RPGs (South Park: The Fractured But Whole, 2017), rhythm games (Rocksmith+, 2022), strategy games (The Settlers: New Allies, 2023), and numerous action games.