Overview
- Bloomberg, citing former developer Nick Herman, reports that an early Splinter Cell effort at Ubisoft San Francisco in 2017 was redirected after months of work.
- The team prototyped a narrative games‑as‑a‑service approach before leadership lost interest and pursued a competitive multiplayer shooter instead.
- That pivot produced XDefiant, led in part by ex–Call of Duty executive Mark Rubin, which launched in 2024 and was shuttered in under a year.
- Coverage links the shutdown to layoffs and the closure of Ubisoft San Francisco, marking fallout from the strategy change.
- Herman and colleagues later founded AdHoc Studio, whose 2025 single‑player title Dispatch surpassed 1 million sales, while Ubisoft Toronto continues work on an officially announced Splinter Cell remake using Snowdrop.