Ubisoft has reportedly canceled a multiplayer, cooperative Assassin's Creed title that has been in development at French studio Ubisoft Annecy.
This comes from a report by French publication Origami, which IGN has independently translated. According to the report, the project was codenamed "AC League", was originally conceived as a DLC for Assassin's Creed Shadows, and would have potentially taken place in the same feudal Japan era. The DLC would have involved four assassins joining forces to take on a series of scripted missions with up to four players that would have ultimately concluded the story told in the game's (canceled) Season Pass. You may have already heard of AC League if you pay close attention to Assassin's Creed gossip, as it was previously rumored last year in a report from Insider Gaming.
The project, Origami reports, was apparently fairly ambitious and was intended to serve as a baseline for future multiplayer features throughout the series, such as a return to a hybrid solo/multiplayer playstyle as existed in Assassin's Creed Unity or Black Flag (a remake of which has been rumored for some time now). However, as the AC League project progressed, directors at Ubisoft Annecy reportedly began to question whether it made sense to attach League to Shadows, as they worried it would take too long to make, and came up with a different plan that turned it into a small, standalone title borrowing pieces of the Assassin's Creed: Shadows open world. Development on this progressed with an intended invite-only alpha planned for May of 2026.
Unfortunately, AC League was allegedly just the latest victim of the ongoing upheaval at Ubisoft. For several months now, the company has been undergoing a massive restructure alongside major cost-cutting measures, canceling numerous projects, closing studios, and reorganizing its creative houses. It was to this restructuring that AC League fell victim, with leadership at Ubisoft Annecy being informed just last week that AC League was being canceled.
However, there is still a sliver of hope for the project, Origami reports. Apparently, a handful of Annecy employees have been selected to transfer the technical advancements the team made back into the company's proprietary Anvil engine, with the goal of eventually making it easier to add replayable multiplayer modes to future Assassin's Creed titles that would be less expensive to develop. Unfortunately, that leaves more than a quarter of the 270 individuals working at Annecy without a project at the moment, leaving a lot of lingering anxiety that layoffs may be coming next.
IGN has reached out to Ubisoft for comment.
Ubisoft's quarterly earnings will be reported next week, and all eyes are on the company to see if it can pull itself together amid some drastic financial times. Upon last reporting, the company had thrown out its previous fiscal year guidance for new, significantly reduced financial expectations, reflective of the fact that the company just closed two stories, laid off a lot of employees, and canceled six projects. It's also handed off its three biggest franchises to Vantage Studios, a newly-created business entity owned by Ubisoft but with a 25% stake from Tencent to help keep the lights on.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Article translation courtesy of Blythe Dujardin.
