Ubisoft’s acquisition of Amazon Games Montreal and its in‑development MOBA March of Giants signals a sharper push into competitive PvP and long‑tail live service, powered by Rainbow Six Siege veterans returning home.
Ubisoft didn’t just buy another live‑service hopeful when it acquired Amazon Games Montreal. It picked up a fully formed team of Rainbow Six Siege veterans, an in‑development 4v4 MOBA already battle‑tested in closed alpha, and a clearer path into a genre Ubisoft has watched from the sidelines for years.
What March of Giants Actually Is
March of Giants is pitched as a free‑to‑play “war MOBA,” built for 4v4 matches where each player controls a towering Giant marching across a ravaged urban battlefield. Rather than micro‑managing a small hero in a lane, you command a giant frontline bruiser, lead AI troops, and deploy tactical structures called Battleworks to control space.
Early materials and the official site frame it as a PC‑first title targeting Windows, with a focus on competitive PvP and co‑op. Matches play out on dense, asymmetric arenas where positioning and macro calls matter as much as individual mechanical skill. The emphasis on team coordination, information, and utility tools sounds familiar if you know Rainbow Six Siege, which is not accidental given who is leading the project.
The game has already run a closed alpha, which Ubisoft describes as successful, and the team is now at work on a substantial update that will introduce new Giants, expanded competitive modes, and the foundational systems for long‑term live support. In other words, March of Giants is well past concept and early prototyping. Ubisoft is inheriting a live‑service backbone rather than building one from scratch.
The Siege Connection: Who’s Actually Making It
Two names define this acquisition for industry watchers: creative director Xavier Marquis and production lead Alexandre Parizeau.
Marquis is best known as the original creative director on Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. Under his watch, Siege shifted from a risky reboot of a legacy tactical shooter into one of Ubisoft’s most profitable and resilient live games. The early years of Siege were defined by careful map design, asymmetric operator kits, and a willingness to rework core systems in response to high‑level competitive play. That philosophy appears to carry over to March of Giants, which is again built around tight teamplay, information control, and a focus on readability in chaotic fights.
Parizeau, meanwhile, previously served as managing director of Ubisoft Toronto, overseeing large‑scale productions and live pipelines. He now leads production on March of Giants. That combination of creative and production leadership with deep Ubisoft experience makes the acquisition feel less like a speculative bet and more like a repatriation of a senior team that already knows the company’s tools, tech, and processes.
Most of Amazon Games Montreal’s staff started out at Ubisoft before spinning out under Amazon’s banner. With this deal, that loop closes. The studio is set to be folded into one of Ubisoft’s new internal “Creative Houses,” a structure intended to group teams around specific genres and long‑term franchises. For March of Giants, that should mean better access to shared PvP technology, monetization expertise, and cross‑project live‑ops learnings.
Why Ubisoft Wants A MOBA Now
Ubisoft has spent the last decade circling, rather than owning, the MOBA and broader hero‑driven PvP space. Rainbow Six Siege gave it a strong tactical shooter flagship, but attempts to expand into other competitive niches have had mixed results. Games like Hyper Scape and XDefiant fought for relevance in crowded markets, and several other multiplayer experiments were quietly shelved.
By acquiring March of Giants, Ubisoft is not just greenlighting another internal prototype. It is buying a game that has already survived the harshest internal filter at Amazon, passed through closed alpha, and shown enough promise that a platform holder was willing to keep marketing support attached even after selling the IP. Amazon is set to continue promoting March of Giants on Twitch, which should give Ubisoft a direct promotional pipeline to competitive and MOBA‑curious players.
Strategically, Ubisoft has been vocal about wanting more “forever games” to sit alongside Siege and its biggest open‑world franchises. The MOBA market is crowded, but stable. League of Legends and Dota 2 dominate, yet there is consistent appetite for genre twists that respect competitive depth without replicating every legacy system those games carry. March of Giants’ 4v4 format, war‑themed Giants, and macro‑heavy lane control aim to slot into that space, closer to a tactical brawler with MOBA DNA than a pure clone of the big two.
How It Fits Into Ubisoft’s Online PvP Strategy
Zoomed out, the deal aligns with three pillars of Ubisoft’s current strategy for online PvP: specialization, shared tech, and cross‑brand reach.
Specialization means building teams that live and breathe a specific kind of competitive game. Siege carved out a dedicated tactical shooter group that learned, season by season, how to balance, ship, and operate a high‑stakes PvP title. March of Giants gives Ubisoft a parallel center of gravity for third‑person, ability‑driven combat and objective play, separate from Tom Clancy’s military framing but backed by many of the same minds.
Shared tech is where the Creative House setup matters. Ubisoft has grown its internal services for matchmaking, anti‑cheat, progression, and events over the last decade supporting Siege and other connected titles. March of Giants can tap into these mature systems rather than spinning up bespoke infrastructure. For competitive players, that should translate into more reliable netcode, clearer ranked structures, and a more predictable cadence of balance patches than many new MOBAs manage on launch.
Cross‑brand reach is about how Ubisoft can use its portfolio to feed interest into March of Giants. Siege already has a deep esports and creator community. Ubisoft can cross‑promote through in‑game rewards, partnered events, and platform‑wide initiatives on Ubisoft Connect. The Twitch marketing piece from Amazon slots into that, giving the publisher a launchpad where MOBA and FPS audiences already watch high‑level competition.
Long‑Term Support: Lessons From Siege And Other Live Efforts
For competitive MOBA players, the central question is not just what March of Giants plays like, but whether Ubisoft will stick with it once the first meta settles and the launch window hype fades.
Here, Siege is the best case study. Launched in 2015 with modest sales and skepticism around its smaller content offering, Siege evolved through disciplined seasonal updates, aggressive rebalancing, and reworks of problematic operators and maps. Ubisoft took the long view, even when the game was not yet a blockbuster, and slowly built a durable esport and a highly engaged ranked ladder.
If Ubisoft applies the same patience to March of Giants, the game could enjoy a healthier runway than many new MOBAs that burn out after a year of updates. The presence of Marquis and his Siege‑tested design team increases the odds that balance, map readability, and counterplay will be treated as long‑term investments rather than short‑term patch notes.
At the same time, Ubisoft’s live‑service track record is not flawless. Projects like Hyper Scape were sunset relatively quickly when they failed to find an audience, and other experimental PvP efforts were scaled back once metrics dipped. The difference with March of Giants is how much institutional weight Ubisoft is placing on the MOBA category itself, as underlined by the company’s own framing of the deal as a way to “accelerate” in a fast‑growing market segment.
For serious MOBA and competitive players, this likely translates into a few concrete expectations. Ranked systems, lobbies, and spectator tools will probably arrive earlier and more robustly than in many newcomers, because Ubisoft knows these are non‑negotiable for long‑tail engagement. A clearly communicated seasonal roadmap, anchored by new Giants and reworks, is almost guaranteed given how Siege structures its year. And with Twitch support in the mix, early tournaments, creator showcases, and community feedback loops should spin up quickly, shortening the gap between high‑level play and patch priorities.
What This Means For The MOBA Space
March of Giants is not about unseating League of Legends or Dota 2. Ubisoft is instead betting that there is room for a more digestible, squad‑focused MOBA that borrows some of Siege’s tactical sensibilities. Matches that revolve around clear objectives, readable abilities, and team macro calls are easier to watch on Twitch and easier for new players to understand, while still offering the depth high‑level competitors demand.
For the MOBA scene, Ubisoft’s move signals renewed big‑publisher interest in a genre that smaller studios have mostly experimented with in recent years. If March of Giants finds a consistent player base, expect Ubisoft to lean into official circuits and regional competitions, using its existing esports infrastructure as scaffolding. If it struggles out of the gate, the strength of the incoming team and the company’s desire to establish a MOBA foothold may buy it more time than most newcomers receive.
For now, the acquisition gives March of Giants something most in‑development MOBAs never get: a second, arguably stronger home with a clear appetite for long‑term PvP investment and leadership that has already shipped one of the most resilient competitive shooters of the last decade.