Passionate developers versus greedy, money-hungry management, and it’s easy to guess which side won.
AdHoc Studio’s debut project, Dispatch, was one of the best games of the year. The studio was founded by former Telltale developers and had a long and winding road before Dispatch was released and sold over one million copies. That journey included a stint at Ubisoft San Francisco and the eventual cancellation of a new Splinter Cell game due to pressure from Ubisoft executives who wanted a profitable game that functioned as a game-as-a-service (GaaS) model, which ultimately became XDefiant. Nick Herman, co-founder of AdHoc, confirmed that, after leaving Telltale in 2017 with several former colleagues (just before the studio closed), they joined Ubisoft San Francisco. At the time, the studio was working on a new Splinter Cell game, and Herman was excited about the day-to-day work.
He was eager to contribute to the project and help revive it because it had been dormant for a while. They believed they could craft an engaging narrative that would resonate with fans. However, these feelings faded as Ubisoft executives pressured the development teams to turn their projects into GaaS games. At the time, the executives were obsessed with adding a huge GaaS game to the company’s portfolio.
Herman and his team attempted to develop a narrative GaaS game. They aimed to do so in a meaningful way and created many great prototypes. However, Herman realized that Ubisoft was not interested in the type of game he wanted to create. The first six months were exciting because they believed they could create something great. Then, they realized that everything important to them was no longer important, which is a common occurrence in the gaming world.
Herman and the other former Telltale team members who joined Ubisoft in 2017 left the company in 2018 to found AdHoc, but the project they left behind became XDefiant. Ubisoft San Francisco increasingly focused on creating a game to challenge Call of Duty. XDefiant attempted to do just that with its multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) gameplay.
So, while Herman and his colleagues founded AdHoc and eventually created Dispatch, Ubisoft San Francisco created a free multiplayer title that was shut down a year after its release. This occurred under the same leadership that likely ruined one of many attempts at a new Splinter Cell game that were scrapped over the years. Ubisoft San Francisco also closed as a result.
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