(UPDT) Ubisoft reportedly canceled a Splinter Cell game... which later became XDefiant
, by Thibaut
Updated November 15, 2025, at 12:35 p.m.
In a message posted on X, Mark Rubin, who was executive producer on XDefiant, refuted the information indicating that a canceled Splinter Cell game gave birth to the multiplayer title. He clarified that another game was in development when he arrived, but that it wasn't Splinter Cell.
"Saw the rumor from Bloomberg that we were working on Splinter Cell game before switching to Xdefiant. I can say that is not true.
When I got to Ubisoft they had been working on a game for a year that was very ambitious but was struggling to find the fun. And it was NOT a Splinter Cell game. I then canceled that one and let the team pitch any game ideas they wanted. There were some cool ones but I felt the scope/difficulty was too hard on some ideas so we stuck with an arena shooter and we found the fun quickly.
So no we didn't pivot off Splinter Cell to make XDefiant. Now maybe they were thinking about working on Splinter Cell before I got there but it was never a thing while I was there. My experience with Ubisoft was they are very open to whatever the studio wants to do which is great but I do wish we could have used external engines."
Original article
Here's some news that's likely to upset fans of the Splinter Cell franchise. A new installment was in development at Ubisoft San Francisco in 2017. Unfortunately, the project will never see the light of day.
Bloomberg interviewed Nick Herman, co-founder of AdHoc Studio, which recently released Dispatch. Herman had previously worked at Telltale Games before moving to Ubisoft in early 2017. At that time, Herman and his teams were working on a Splinter Cell game.
"I was thrilled to be part of this project and contribute to its rebirth, as the franchise had been dormant for quite some time. We were confident we could tell a compelling story and give fans a game they would love."
Unfortunately, after several months of work, the French publisher's management got involved in the project and wanted to change its nature. Ubisoft wanted to get into “service games” that could be monetized over the long term. The developers of Splinter Cell therefore attempted to adapt their game to this formula, turning it into a kind of “narrative GAAS (Game as a Service)”.
But after several prototypes, the failure was resounding, and Ubisoft was no longer interested in the Splinter Cell saga. However, not everything was thrown in the trash, as this title evolved into... XDefiant, whose servers were shut down last June, barely a year after the game's release.
Source: bloomberg.com