Ubisoft has once again found itself in the eye of the storm after Nick Herman, co-founder of AdHoc Studio and former Ubisoft developer, claimed in an interview that he left the company over a cancelled Splinter Cell -related project. The statement quickly sparked speculation – especially since fans have been desperately waiting for a new Splinter Cell game for over a decade.
But shortly afterwards, Mark Rubin, former producer of XDefiant and one of the most high-profile people internally at Ubisoft San Francisco, publicly denied the allegations.
Rubin: – It was never a Splinter Cell project
Bloomberg previously reported that the Ubisoft studio had gone straight from a new Splinter Cell project to developing XDefiant . Rubin says this is incorrect, and that no Splinter Cell production was underway when he joined the company.
He explains:
“This wasn’t a Splinter Cell game.”
Rubin claims that the team was already working on a completely different, ambitious project when he started – but that the basic idea of the game didn’t work. The formula was weak, the concept was unclear, and development was going in multiple directions at once. After a year, the project was finally scrapped.
From canceled major project to arena shooter
After the shutdown, the team was given the green light to propose new concepts. There were many creative ideas, Rubin says, but most were too big or too expensive to implement. In the end, one idea stood out: a fast-paced, modern arena shooter.
This would later evolve into XDefiant , Ubisoft’s attempt to enter the market for competitive, free-to-play arena FPS games – a genre dominated by titles like Call of Duty , Apex Legends , and Overwatch .
Rubin clarifies that Ubisoft never pushed the team in a specific direction:
“We haven’t changed direction with Splinter Cell. Maybe something was planned before I came, but when I worked there, there was no such project.”
Herman left Ubisoft before Rubin came on board
At the same time, it is pointed out that Nick Herman left Ubisoft about a year before Rubin was hired in 2019. This means that Herman’s experiences and Rubin’s time at the company do not overlap – which further complicates the picture.
Thus, both claims could be true: Herman may have seen early plans for a Splinter Cell -related project, while Rubin arrived at a completely different development landscape with no trace of the same game.
Splinter Cell remake still in development
While rumors of canceled experiments abound, one thing is confirmed: Ubisoft is still actively working on a full remake of the original Splinter Cell .
According to sources close to the project, Ubisoft is aiming for a 2026 release . The remake will be built from the ground up in the Snowdrop engine – the same engine that powers The Division and the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws .
For many fans, this is the real news: Sam Fisher is indeed returning, even if the road there has been messy and full of internal detours.
