Yes, we call it dormant – this game is slowly turning into a joke on the level of Beyond Good & Evil 2…
The Splinter Cell Remake, announced by Ubisoft in 2021, has a new director. His name is David Grivel, and if it rings a bell, that is because he was already in charge of the project when it was first revealed, before leaving the French publisher less than a year later. When Grivel departed Ubisoft in October 2022, he said that after 11 years at the company, it was time to embark on a new adventure. According to his LinkedIn profile, that adventure took him to Electronic Arts, where he spent around a year and a half working on Battlefield 6 as design director at Ridgeline Games. That stint ended when Ridgeline was shut down in early 2024 as part of major layoffs at Electronic Arts, sending Grivel back to Ubisoft for a short spell on an unannounced, early-concept project. At the end of 2024, he left once more to join Worlds Untold… just in time for the studio to be caught up in significant layoffs at NetEase.
Now he is back where it all began. On LinkedIn, Grivel wrote that he is very happy to announce his return to Ubisoft Toronto as director of the Splinter Cell Remake, adding that he considers both the studio and the project to be very special. He did not share any additional details about the long-awaited remake, though. In fact, his comeback post is the first real update we have had on the game since he walked away three years ago. Earlier this year, there was a faint hope that new information might finally surface, but that also went nowhere. Instead, the French publisher continued its decade-long trolling of Splinter Cell fans with an image of Sam Fisher supposedly from Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – which, as it turned out, was actually taken from Pandora Tomorrow.
Grivel’s return comes at a turbulent moment for Ubisoft. A delayed financial report ultimately shed very little light on the company’s situation, its share price remains depressed, and its roadmap leans worryingly hard on AI, live service games, and Tencent. Still, the move is at least a sign that the remake has not been quietly abandoned. Even if this feels like another soft reboot for the project, it is, technically, a step forward rather than another silent retreat.
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