In a recent interview, it was suggested that Ubisoft was working on a new Splinter Cell game that was canceled before it saw the light of day. This tidbit came from Nick Herman, the co-founder of AdHoc Studio, the creator of the recent title ‘Dispatch’, starring Aaron Paul. Herman stressed that he left Ubisoft after the project was canceled and opened a new studio, AdHoc, in 2018.
However, Mark Rubin, who is best known as the executive producer on the failed arena shooter, XDefiant, took to social media to refute claims that his team was making Splinter Cell and was ordered to pivot and focus instead on XDefiant.
Splinter Cell Did Not Become XDefiant
In a post on social media, Mark Rubin stressed that a recent rumor published first by Bloomberg is not true. This rumor suggests that Ubisoft was working on Splinter Cell but ‘switched’ to XDefiant. Rubin categorically denies that it was the case, stating that they were working on a game for a year, but the team was ‘struggling to find the fun.’
He then pushed the point again that it ‘was NOT a Splinter Cell game.’
Here’s the full quote from Rubin:
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.
The recent claim from Nick Herman, co-founder of AdHoc Studios, was that Ubisoft ‘stopped caring about’ the game the team was working on. Herman would leave around a year before Mark Rubin arrived in 2019.
Ubisoft is still working on a remake of the original Splinter Cell title, which is working with a reported release window of 2026.
Do you wish we’d gotten a new Splinter Cell game in the last ten years or so? Let me know on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Escape from Tarkov is getting easier
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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