Report says Ubisoft canceled a Splinter Cell game that later became XDefiant, with director saying 'it's not true'

Ubisoft was developing a new Splinter Cell game that would take a games-as-a-service approach and was later renamed XDefiant, which was shut down by the publisher shortly after release. That's according to Nick Herman, a game developer who had just launched the episodic game Dispatch to great success before leaving to start AdHoc Studios. After the report was published, XDefiant Director Mark Rubin publicly responded to the report and shared his perspective.

“I'm excited to be a part of it and help revive it because it's been dormant for a while,” Herman said. Bloomberg. “We thought we could tell a great story and do something that fans would love.”

According to Bloomberg, the game has been in development for “several months,” and Herman confirmed that Ubisoft wants it to have a games-as-a-service element.

“We tried,” Herman said. “Let's make a narrative GAAS game. We tried to make it make sense and made a lot of cool prototypes.”

The report states that “Ubisoft has lost interest in the Splinter Cell game” and is instead pursuing a project that might try to compete with Call of Duty. This is XDefiant, a game directed by former Call of Duty boss Mark Rubin. game It closed a year later and the developer was fired.

“We think we can do some really great things,” Herman said. “Then you realize that all the things you cared about no longer matter. That's very common in games.”

Rubin, the director of XDefiant who no longer works at Ubisoft, shared his story. He said it was “not true” that Ubisoft was developing a Splinter Cell game before moving to XDefiant.

“When I came to Ubisoft, they had spent a year developing a very ambitious game but were struggling to find fun. And it wasn't a Splinter Cell game. Then I canceled that game and let the team come up with whatever game ideas they wanted,” he said. “There were some cool pieces, but I felt the scope/difficulty of some of the ideas was too difficult, so we stuck with arena shooters, which we quickly found fun with. So, no, we didn't pivot from Splinter Cell to making XDefiant. Now maybe they were looking at working on Splinter Cell before I got there, but that was never a thing when I was there. My experience with Ubisoft is that they're very open to anything the studio wants to do, which is great, but I do wish we could use an external engine.”

Although the Splinter Cell game has not yet been released, A Splinter Cell remake is currently in development. In addition to games, the TV shows Splinter Cell and Deathwatch premiered on Netflix in October and have been renewed for a second season. A live-action movie is in the works, but Apparently not anymore.