7 Years Later, Ubisoft's Abandoned Open-World Series Officially Gets a Huge Update

Published Oct 6, 2026, 12:33 PM EDT Willa Rowe is a contributing writer at Polygon, covering games and entertainment. She is a New York-based journalist and critic whose work has been featured in Kotaku, Digital Trends, the A.V. Club, GamesRadar+, and more. She also co-hosts the Girl Mode podcast. The franchise has been dormant since 2020 Ubisoft reportedly reviving Watch Dogs next year with an unexpected release Ubisoft Sign in to your Polygon.com account There was a time when Ubisoft wanted to make Watch Dogs another core franchise in the company's portfolio alongside the likes of Assassin's Creed and Far Cry. Despite releasing three titles in the series, it never quite caught on. After the poor reception of 2020's Legion, Watch Dogs has been dormant. That might be about to change. As reported by Insider Gaming and corroborated by IGN, Ubisoft is planning to release a director's cut of Legion in the first half of 2027. The updated version will be something of a remake that seeks to reinvent and bring the series back to life. It's not clear why Ubisoft isn't reviving Watch Dogs with an entirely new game, but it's likely due to cost. Reworking an existing game would likely be cheaper than building a new one from the ground up. In this way, it sounds like Ubisoft wants to test the waters for something bigger should the director's cut succeed. While the first two Watch Dogs games had their fans, Legion was almost universally panned. Rather than focus on a single protagonist, the game let players control any NPC, each of whom belonged to a class that determined their abilities. It was a novel idea that extended the series' themes around technology and surveillance, but it didn't exactly work. It is likely Ubisoft will want to address this with the director's cut. Ubisoft still has hope for Watch Dogs Image: Ubisoft Toronto/Ubisoft It does seem Ubisoft still has a vested interest in making Watch Dogs work. Game File recently reported that an investor asked CEO Yves Guillemot about the future of the series. Guillemot said that it is "still a brand that we consider to be an important brand for the future." That being said, he doesn't expect the franchise to be assigned to any of the company's creative houses (divisions focusing on particular games) anytime soon. Meanwhile, there is still allegedly a Watch Dogs movie coming. Principal photography for the film was shot in 2024, and it underwent reshoots in 2025; no release date has been announced. The film was first announced all the way back in 2013.