If you do some research you'll find, as Frontier did, that polar bears have different requirements than other bears. They have "insanely big space requirements" because they need it. Polar bears in RL zoos are seriously struggling. Frontier did the right thing, I'm on their side on this one. We shouldn't be keeping animals in zoos if we can't meet their actual requirements.
Polar bears in some zoos are seriously struggling. In others they are doing very well. Bears in general have complex needs which have not always been addressed but in recent years there has been something of a revolution in bear husbandry.
Varied terrain and substrate, environmental enrichment and sensory stimulation are vital for all bears and traditional bear enclosures - pits and grottos often didn’t provide this. In a pit for example, bears can’t smell the wind and miss out on vital sensory stimulation.
Substandard enclosures, with some exceptions - Japan for example - are increasingly rare. Thankfully the sight of bears of any species showing stereotyping in a concrete pit or environmentally barren stone grotto is less and less common. Bears - including polar bears - are increasingly kept in open enclosures, wooded or meadows with varied terrain and substrate, natural sensory stimulation and crucially - something the game doesn’t address as far as I can tell - appropriate social groupings including solitary environments where appropriate.
Look at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park and Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland; Skandinavisk Dyrepark in Denmark, Orsa Rovdjurspark in Sweden for exemplary polar bear husbandry.
There are also a number of other zoos with smaller but still humane, rich and appropriate environments.
Sweeping statements about zoos and polar bears are very unhelpful not to mention ill-informed.
No doubt Frontier have the best intentions but I’d be genuinely interested to learn exactly what research they did to come up with what I regard as excessive space requirements whilst ignoring other key elements of polar bear husbandry.
