Ubisoft Developing Assassin’s Creed Infinity, Reportedly A Live-Service Game

Early this morning, Ubisoft announced that the company is early in development on a new entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, codenamed Assassin’s Creed Infinity. While Ubisoft’s announcement of the project doesn’t provide any details about what this new game will be, a report from Bloomberg that was released prior to Ubisoft’s announcement says that it’s a live-service game.

According to Bloomberg, the project isn’t set to be released for a few years, so any specific details about the game are subject to change. Based on what they’ve been told as of now, Assassin’s Creed Infinity will buck the series’ trend of focusing on a singular region and instead will “contain multiple settings with room to expand to others in the months and years following its debut.” To bring this project to fruition, and guide the future of the series as a whole, the teams at Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Quebec will now be working in collaboration with one another.

For the past couple of years, both teams have taken turns putting out different games in the series. As Ubisoft states, this new development structure will allow the series to “evolve in a more integrated and collaborative manner” that’s focused more on the talent each team has as opposed to the name behind the teams. This new structure will be led by Marc-Alexis Côté, a founding member of Ubisoft Quebec who’s worked on Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Syndicate, and Odyssey. Each team will have their own leads that oversee the development work for their respective group.

Things aren’t all good though with this change in structure. People who spoke to Bloomberg made it clear that there are employees at Ubisoft who are upset with the reorganization since some of the people in leadership positions are ones who had allegations levied against them last year when multiple Ubisoft employees spoke out against the abuse and harassment they were facing. A spokeswoman for Ubisoft did not speak on any of the individual cases, but did tell Bloomberg that anyone who is still working at the company after previously being investigated “would not remain at Ubisoft if results of investigations warranted termination.”

What Assassin’s Creed Infinity eventually turns out to be is a mystery as of now, and will be for quite some time. But it’s clear that Ubisoft sees the future of their flagship franchise as one that goes in the direction of industry money makers like Fortnite and GTA Online. It was only a matter of time before the series made a shift like this given that it’s Ubisoft’s biggest series. One can’t help but wonder though if this is the right move for the brand. We’ll find out in a few years time. For now, we have new Assassin’s Creed Valhalla DLC to look forward to this summer.