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The Splinter Cell controversy has returned to the forefront again after a recent report indicated that Ubisoft was working on a new part of the series before it was canceled, this information came through an interview with Nick Herman, co-founder of AdHoc studio, who confirmed that he left the company in 2018 after the project was stopped before he founded his new team.
However, this story sparked a wave of interpretations, most notably the claim that the canceled project later turned into the game XDefiant, and here came the response of Mark Rubin, the game’s executive producer, who categorically denied any relationship between the two projects.
In a social media post, Rubin said that the Bloomberg rumor is not true, explaining that the team when it arrived at Ubisoft had already been working on a new game for a year, but it was very ambitious and had difficulty finding the fun element directly:
It wasn’t Splinter Cell.
He added that after that project was canceled, the team was allowed to come up with multiple ideas for new games, but most of them were too large-scale and difficult to implement, which led them to stick with the idea of a fast-paced, arena-style shooter that later became XDefiant, and he reiterated:
We didn’t switch from Splinter Cell to XDefiant at all
Rubin pointed out that it is possible that Ubisoft may have considered developing a new part of Splinter Cell before its arrival in 2019, but he emphasized that this did not happen during his tenure within the company, stressing that Ubisoft gives its studios great freedom in choosing projects, although he wished to be able to use external engines.
On the other hand, Herrmann’s statements correspond to a different timeline. He said that their project was canceled about a year before Rubin joined the company and that Ubisoft was no longer interested in the direction the development was headed.
Despite multiple cancellations over the years, the Splinter Cell series has not completely disappeared, as Ubisoft is currently working on a remake of Part 1 with a tentative release window of 2026, despite the absence of any official updates over the past months, and with more than 10 years having passed since the last major part, are fans still waiting for Splinter Cell to return again?
