New Report Reveals How Ubisoft Execs Killed a Splinter Cell Game to Make XDefiant

AdHoc Studio's debut project, Dispatch, has become one of 2025's late entries into the game of the year conversation based on the way it's been received online by players and critics alike. The studio, which was founded by former Telltale developers, has taken a long, winding journey to get to the point where Dispatch is out and has sold over 1 million copies. A journey that, according to a new report, included a stint at Ubisoft San Francisco, and how a new Splinter Cell game was eventually crushed under Ubisoft executives pushing for a games-as-a-service (GaaS) money-making game, which would become XDefiant.

It's a bit of a wild story, which is why it's not surprising that the reveal comes from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, a reporter who has essentially made a career out of telling some of the video game industry's most wild stories across all of his articles and his three books.

NEW: the new game Dispatch is a huge hit (1 million copies!). But few people know how close it came to never existing. Here's the wild story, from a canceled Splinter Cell game (scoop!) to a Telltale divorce to the founders not taking paychecks for six months: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social) 2025-11-14T18:03:09.854Z

Nick Herman, co-founder of AdHoc, confirmed that after he and some of his fellow former Telltale cohorts left Telltale Games in 2017, which was just before the studio would close (though it was later revived), they joined Ubisoft San Francisco. At the time, the studio was working on a new Splinter Cell game, and Herman was excited for the work he was doing each day.

"I was so excited to be a part of this and help revitalize it, because it's been dormant for a while, and we thought we could tell a great story and do something the fans would love," Herman said. Unfortunately, those feelings were eventually dashed, as the report explains that Ubisoft executives, who were (and probably still are) obsessed with getting a giant GaaS game in the company's portfolio, pressured development teams across the company to find a way to make their projects games-as-a-service games.

"We tried," Herman began. "'Let's make a narrative GaaS game.' We were trying to make that make sense, and a lot of cool prototypes were made." Nothing was able to go the distance, however, and soon after, Herman understood that Ubisoft was not interested in making the kind of game he was interested in making.

"It was exciting to go to work for the first six months because we thought we were going to be able to make something really great. And then you realize that all the things you care about, they don't anymore. It's a common thing in games."

Herman and the rest of his former Telltale team members, who joined Ubisoft in 2017, would leave to start AdHoc in 2018 when the opportunity came, but the project that they left would grow to become XDefiant. According to the report, Ubisoft San Francisco started to focus more on wanting to make something to challenge Call of Duty, which is essentially what XDefiant was trying to do with its approach to multiplayer FPS gameplay.

So while Herman and his colleagues would go on to start AdHoc and eventually make Dispatch, under the stewardship of the same executive class that killed what is likely just one of many attempts at a new Splinter Cell game that've been crushed over the years, Ubisoft San Francisco went on to make a free-to-play multiplayer game that was shut down a year after it came out. Ubisoft San Francisco was also shut down as a result. A classic masterful gambit from Ubisoft.

Regarding new Splinter Cell games, we know the team at Ubisoft Toronto is currently leading development on a remake of the first game, but we've not had an update on that project for a while now.

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