Tom Clancy's The Division is an online-only action role-playing video game developed by Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

It is set in a near future New York City in the aftermath of a viral pandemic; the player, a Special Agent of the Strategic Homeland Division, is tasked with helping the group rebuild its operations in Manhattan, investigate the nature of the outbreak, and combat criminal activity in its wake.

Tom Clancy's The Division is an action role-playing game set in an open world mid-crisis Manhattan with destructible environments that can be freely explored by the players.

[6] The Dark Zone is the player-versus-player competitive multiplayer mode featured in The Division, where a lot of high-end weapons are left behind when the military retreats in the game.

[5] On Black Friday 2015, a viral epidemic, transmitted by a smallpox-based virus planted on banknotes, sweeps through New York City.

The disease, known as "Green Poison" or the "Dollar Flu", causes widespread chaos, and major cities across the United States are placed under quarantine.

Facing the collapse of law and order, the United States government activates sleeper agents in the population who work for the Strategic Homeland Division (SHD; or simply "the Division"), to assist the Joint Task Force (JTF)—a combined task force of police, fire and rescue, National Guard, disaster response organizations, and civilian volunteers—in restoring order.

From there, the Agent undertakes assignments to assist and rescue personnel, restore the base to full working capacity, and combat New York City's dominant criminal groups: the Rioters, common street thugs attempting to take advantage of the quarantine; the Rikers, sadistic escapees from Rikers Island; and the Cleaners, Department of Sanitation employees who seek to "purify" whatever they deem infected using incendiary weapons.

The leader of the LMB, Charles Bliss, initially escapes in a helicopter, but returns to make a last stand alongside his men and is killed in a battle with the Agent.

In the aftermath, Lau informs the Agent that most threats are destroyed or weakened, the LMB was split into factions, and New York City is approaching stability.

Later, an unknown signal leads the Agent to a secluded laboratory, where they find Amherst's remains and learn he died from the Green Poison.

[10][11] During E3 2013, the game was officially announced,[12][13] with a trailer explaining the results of Operation Dark Winter and the purpose of Directive 51.

[16] Red Storm Entertainment, a subsidiary of Ubisoft that was co-founded by Tom Clancy, was also working on the weapon-design of the game.

[22] Its companion app was cancelled, as the company considered that the addition of drones will bring unfairness to the competitive multiplayer mode of the game.

[28] There was a promotional short film released on Amazon Prime Video titled The Division: Agent Origins.

[30] The May update, named Conflict, adds Dark Zone Extraction Hijacking and the new Incursion - Clear Sky, which was released.

[31] Survival and Last Stand were delayed to late 2016 and early 2017, respectively, so that Ubisoft could focus its effort on fixing the core game's issues, such as balancing and bugs.

Ars Technica drew comparisons between The Division and Destiny, a first-person shooter game with similar overall mechanics regarding items, crafting, and "shared world" elements.

The Division was criticized for lacking variety in its activities and missions, explaining that it "does little to break from or advance what is fast becoming the general form of the "loot shooter" genre.

The gun mechanics of The Division were described as being "standard" and more in line with the more realistic feel of other Tom Clancy-branded games, with guns that had distinct feels due to their varying statistics, and that "the fact that the action leans so heavily on smart tactics makes it rewarding when the last foe in a pack finally goes down.

While noting that its "post-game" content was mainly limited to harder versions of story missions with stronger "bullet sponge" enemies, Ingenito praised the Dark Zone for "[fixing] just about every problem I have with The Division's pacing, its lack of player-driven moments, and the overall toothlessness and emptiness of its open world", by adding an "omnipresent" danger and a higher degree of risk to player interactions.

In conclusion, Ingenito felt that the game's ideas and mechanics were "not spread evenly or interwoven cleanly enough to form a cohesive, consistently enjoyable loop".

[48] Prior to version 1.0.2 of the game, named enemy NPCs would respawn indefinitely, as long as their entourage of minions were never killed.

Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Tom Clancy's The Division for "Role-Playing/Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay".

The Division also broke the industry record for biggest first-week launch for a new game franchise, generating an estimated amount of $330 million globally.

Jake Gyllenhaal was cast to star in the lead role, and to co-produce the film with CEO of Ubisoft Motion Pictures, Gerard Guillemot.