According to Wccftech, former Telltale developers including Nick Herman joined Ubisoft San Francisco in 2017 to work on a new Splinter Cell game that would revitalize the dormant franchise. The team was excited about creating a narrative-driven experience fans would love, but Ubisoft executives pressured them to pivot toward a games-as-service model instead. Despite creating “narrative GaaS” prototypes, the team realized Ubisoft wasn’t interested in their vision and left in 2018 to form AdHoc Studio. Their abandoned project eventually became XDefiant, Ubisoft’s free-to-play multiplayer shooter designed to challenge Call of Duty. XDefiant was shut down just one year after launch, and Ubisoft San Francisco was subsequently closed. Meanwhile, AdHoc’s debut game Dispatch has sold over 1 million copies in 2025 and entered game of the year conversations.
The GaaS Obsession That Backfired
Here’s the thing about Ubisoft‘s strategy: it’s been painfully obvious for years that they’re chasing the live-service dragon. They saw the success of games like Fortnite and Apex Legends and decided every franchise needed to become a platform rather than just a game. But what happens when you try to force a square peg like Splinter Cell—a franchise built on stealth, narrative, and single-player immersion—into a round GaaS hole? You get exactly what happened here: creative talent walks, and you’re left with another generic multiplayer shooter that nobody asked for.
And let’s be real—how many times has this exact scenario played out across the industry? Talented developers join a big publisher to work on something they’re passionate about, only to discover the corporate overlords have completely different priorities. Herman’s quote says it all: “It was exciting to go to work for the first six months… and then you realize that all the things you care about, they don’t anymore.” That’s basically the story of modern AAA development in a nutshell.
The Road Not Taken
What’s particularly frustrating about this story is the what-could-have-been factor. We’re talking about developers from Telltale—the studio that practically defined narrative-driven gaming with The Walking Dead—being given the keys to Splinter Cell. That combination sounds like magic. Instead, we got XDefiant, which lasted about as long as a snowball in hell before getting shut down.
Meanwhile, AdHoc goes independent and creates Dispatch, which is apparently doing quite well for itself with over a million copies sold. It’s almost like when you let creative people make the games they actually want to make, good things happen. Who would’ve thought?
Bigger Picture Questions
This whole situation raises some uncomfortable questions about Ubisoft’s direction. They’ve got multiple Splinter Cell projects in various states of development hell—including that remake from Ubisoft Toronto we haven’t heard about in ages. At what point do executives look at the consistent failure of their GaaS pivots and consider that maybe, just maybe, their strategy is fundamentally flawed?
The irony is thick enough to cut with a knife. Ubisoft kills a potentially great Splinter Cell game to chase the GaaS trend, only to have that replacement game fail spectacularly while the developers who left create a successful narrative game elsewhere. It’s a perfect case study in corporate misjudgment. And honestly, it makes you wonder how many other great games we’ve lost to similar executive decisions across the industry.
Where We Are Now
So here we are in 2025. AdHoc is thriving with their successful debut, while Ubisoft is left with another shuttered studio and a failed live-service experiment. The Splinter Cell franchise remains mostly dormant except for that mysterious remake that might never see daylight. It’s a classic tale of corporate priorities clashing with creative vision—and creativity ultimately winning when given the chance elsewhere.
The real tragedy? This probably isn’t even the only Splinter Cell revival that’s been killed over the years. Given how long it’s been since a proper entry, I’d bet money there have been multiple attempts that met similar fates. At this point, Sam Fisher deserves better than being stuck in corporate development hell while executives chase trends that have already passed them by.
