Wary of US politics, Ubisoft reportedly canceled a Civil War Assassin’s Creed where a former slave would become an assassin and fight the Ku Klux Klan: “They are making more and more decisions to maintain the political ‘status quo’ and take no stand”

As per a recent article, Ubisoft terminated an Assassin’s Creed project in 2024 that was intended to be set during and after the American Civil War. In this game, players would assume the role of a Black individual and ex-slave who becomes part of the assassin’s league, confronting adversaries such as the Ku Klux Klan. It was reportedly scrapped due to concerns from Ubisoft management that the subject matter would be overly politically charged.

The cancellation occurred in 2024, just prior to the July 13 assassination attempt on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to information from Game File (paid article link), which references discussions with five current and former Ubisoft staff members.

This title was considered “excessively political in an already unstable country, to put it simply,” as stated by one developer.

Another source remarked, “I was extremely disheartened but not shocked by management. They are increasingly making decisions to uphold the political ‘status quo’ and refrain from taking a stance, avoiding any risk, including creative risk.”

Per the report, the game was in the “concept stage,” following initial approval from Ubisoft leaders, and would have taken years to launch.

While xenophobic backlash against Assassin’s Creed Shadows regarding its representation of Yasuke, a Black samurai, had already commenced by the time this Civil War game was discontinued, the report implies that this was merely a minor factor in Ubisoft’s choice to halt development. The publisher appeared to be more concerned about the overall political environment in the US.

“Management’s decisions affect developers’ creative aspirations and enthusiasm,” stated another developer cited in the report.

Meanwhile, Ubisoft is developing new DLC for Assassin’s Creed Mirage in partnership with Saudi Arabia.

The director of Assassin’s Creed 3 mentions that Ubisoft applied “a lot of pressure” on developers to “increase play time” and “expand” games with RPG features “to postpone resale as GameStop was the sole party profiting from that transaction.”

Dustin Bailey became a member of the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022 and is presently located in Missouri. He has been covering gaming (with occasional ventures into anime and professional wrestling) since 2015, initially as a freelancer, and then as a news reporter at PCGamesN for almost five years. His passion for gaming ignited somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days, you can usually find him dividing his leisure time between retro gaming, the latest major action-adventure release, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.