Ubisoft was working on a new Splinter Cell game that would have used a games-as-a-service approach before it became XDefiant, a game that the publisher canceled shortly after release. So says Nick Herman, a developer who worked on the game before leaving to join AdHoc Studios, the team that just launched the episodic game Dispatch to great success. Following the publication of this report, XDefiant Director Mark Rubin spoke out to react to the report and share his side of the story.
“I was so glad to be a part of it and help revitalize it because it had been dormant for a while,” Herman said in an interview. Bloomberg. “And we thought we could tell a great story and do something that the fans would love.”
The game had been in development for “several months,” Bloomberg reported, and Herman confirmed that Ubisoft wanted it to have game-as-a-service elements.
“We tried,” Herman said. “Let's make a narrative GAAS game. We tried to make sense of it and a lot of cool prototypes were created.”
The report states that “Ubisoft has lost interest” in this Splinter Cell game and has moved on to a project that could try to compete with Call of Duty. It was XDefiant, created by former Call of Duty boss Mark Rubin. Game closed after a year and the developers were fired.
“We thought we could do something really great,” Herman said. “And then you realize that everything you care about doesn’t matter anymore. This is common in games.”
Rubin, who led XDefiant and is no longer with Ubisoft, shared his side of the story. He said it was “not true” that Ubisoft was working on a Splinter Cell game before moving to XDefiant.
“When I joined Ubisoft, they had been working on a game for a year that was very ambitious but was struggling to find fun. And it was NOT a Splinter Cell game. Then I canceled it and let the team come up with whatever game ideas they wanted,” he said. “There were some cool ideas, but I felt the scale/complexity was too much for some of the ideas, so we settled on an arena shooter and quickly found it fun. So no, we didn't abandon Splinter Cell to make XDefiant. They might have been thinking about working on Splinter Cell before I got there, but it was never a big deal while I was there. My experience with Ubisoft has been that they are very open to whatever the studio wants to do, which is great, but I really wish we could use external engines.”
Saw a rumor from Bloomberg that we were working on a Splinter Cell game before switching to Xdefiant. I can say that this is not true. When I joined Ubisoft, they had been working on a game for a year that was very ambitious, but had a hard time finding fun. And it was NOT a Shard…
— Mark Rubin (@PixelsofMark) November 15, 2025
Although the Splinter Cell game will not be released to the market, A Splinter Cell remake is currently in development. In addition to games, the Splinter Cell TV show Death Watch debuted on Netflix in October and has already been renewed for a second season. There was a live-action film in development, but Apparently not anymore.
