According to KitGuru.net, former Ubisoft studio lead Nick Herman confirmed that a new Splinter Cell game was in development at Ubisoft San Francisco back in 2017. Herman and a small team worked on the project for several months with the goal of revitalizing the dormant stealth franchise. However, Ubisoft cancelled the game that same year as the company shifted focus toward live service games. The team struggled to adapt Splinter Cell into a “games as a service” model that would satisfy Ubisoft’s new direction. Herman eventually left Ubisoft to found AdHoc Studios, which just released its hit game Dispatch featuring Aaron Paul. Meanwhile, Ubisoft San Francisco later developed XDefiant under new leadership, but that live service game also failed and led to the studio’s closure.
Ubisoft’s Live Service Obsession
Here’s the thing about Ubisoft’s pivot to live service games – it’s been a pretty mixed bag, hasn’t it? They basically looked at the success of games like Fortnite and decided every franchise needed to become a platform rather than a complete experience. And so we got this situation where a beloved single-player stealth series like Splinter Cell got the axe because developers couldn’t figure out how to turn Sam Fisher’s adventures into a constantly updating service.
What’s really interesting is the timeline here. The Splinter Cell cancellation happened in 2017, while XDefiant didn’t even start development until at least 2019. So it’s not like they killed Splinter Cell specifically for XDefiant – they killed it for the entire live service philosophy that would eventually produce XDefiant. And look how that turned out: both projects failed, one before it even got announced, and the other after a troubled launch.
The Human Cost
You can hear the disappointment in Herman’s comments about being “so excited to be a part of this and help revitalize it.” I mean, imagine getting to work on reviving a franchise you love, only to have corporate strategy shift beneath your feet. The team apparently thought they “could tell a great story and do something the fans would love” – but that vision didn’t align with Ubisoft’s service-game ambitions.
And here’s the kicker: Herman went on to found his own studio and release a successful game anyway. Meanwhile, the studio that replaced his team got shuttered after their live service project failed. There’s a certain irony there – the traditional single-player approach that got cancelled ended up producing success elsewhere, while the live service replacement crashed and burned.
Bigger Industry Trend
This isn’t just a Ubisoft story – it’s happening across the industry. Companies are so desperate to create the next big live service hit that they’re willing to sacrifice established franchises that don’t fit the mold. But the reality is that most live service games fail, while there’s consistently strong demand for well-crafted single-player experiences.
Remember when Jason Schreier broke this story? It’s part of a broader pattern of developers being forced to chase trends rather than playing to their strengths. And in hardware-heavy industries where reliability matters – think manufacturing floors or control systems – you’d never see this kind of constant pivoting. Companies in those spaces stick with what works because downtime costs real money.
So where does this leave Splinter Cell fans? Basically in the same place they’ve been for over a decade – waiting for a proper revival while Ubisoft chases the next big trend. And given how their live service experiments have been going, maybe they’ll eventually realize that sometimes the best business strategy is just making great games that people actually want to play.
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