Assassin’s Creed Co-Op Game Reportedly Canceled

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French outlet Origami Media reportedly spoke half a dozen people within Ubisoft for this report. According to these sources, Ubisoft Annecy was working on a game where up to four Assassins would team up on a map that was “possibly” in the same era as Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ Feudal Japan.

Its connections to Shadows are a bit obtuse, hence the term “possibly.” After some turmoil following a few failed projects (more on that near the bottom), League was reportedly slated to be DLC for the Japan-set game before management began to rethink the project. These leaders apparently thought it would have taken too much time for the studio to get League to an acceptable state. As such, the team was mulling over options, like grafting the existing work to a more “traditional” Assassin’s Creed game currently being developed or downsizing the scope and have it be its own stand-alone title that used parts of Shadows‘ map. The studio chose the latter option and began making plans to have invite-only play sessions in May 2026.

The plans are said to have come to a halt after a recent playtest with the top brass at Vantage, Ubisoft’s Tencent-backed subsidiary that has control over Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six. With heavy restructuring going on within the company, it seems like standards are rising or, at the very least, changing.

Assassin’s Creed Multiplayer May Live On, Though

Image COurtesy of Ubisoft

However, it seems like some of the work done on League hasn’t all been tossed into the recycle bin. According to the Origami report, around 10 employees have been tasked with implementing this tech into Ubisoft’s Anvil engine — which has been powering Ubisoft games in some form since the original Assassin’s Creed in 2007 — in order to help support cooperative modes in future Assassin’s Creed games. The goal is to reportedly have “highly replayable” modes that are less expensive to develop when compared to the ill-fated League. The report also claims that League had a “strong R&D component” and was meant to reintroduce multiplayer to Assassin’s Creed.

League was allegedly bred from another failed Assassin’s Creed multiplayer project codenamed Echoes, a project still shrouded in secrecy. Following Echoes‘ cancelation, Annecy tried to develop another multiplayer Assassin’s Creed game that failed to come together. And then when that project fizzled out, Annecy reportedly began scrapping together elements from Shadows for what would become League. Essentially, this project has been canceled in some form at least three times.

Granted that it also hasn’t been secretly terminated, there is still at least one multiplayer Assassin’s Creed game in production. Assassin’s Creed Invictus was officially revealed in 2022 and was described as a game that was meant to be “more approachable, more mass market.” Recent rumors surrounding it have described it as a Fall Guys-style experience with a Fortnite-like visual style that its developers are supposedly not even enjoying. Seeing as though Ubisoft is tightening its metaphorical belt and is willing cancel an allegedly nearly done remake of a widely beloved classic, it remains to be seen if this game will make it to release.

There have also been many rumblings about an Assassin’s Creed Shadows cooperative mode. The team revealed it had talked about it early on before focusing on the solo experience. These co-op rumors were present before that statement, though, as a report from October 2024 said a cooperative mode for Shadows was in development. And then in April 2025, a modder that goes by Sliderv2 reportedly found references to multiplayer within Shadows‘ code. However, those lines of code seem to point to PVP multiplayer, whereas other reports (including this latest one from Origami) have pointed to PVE multiplayer.

Assassin’s Creed started out as a strictly solo series until 2010’s Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. Following games like Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Assassin’s Creed 3, and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag all had competitive, cat-and-mouse-style online multiplayer where players had to outsmart each other in order to secure kills. Assassin’s Creed Unity didn’t have these competitive modes and opted to have four-player co-op instead. Assassin’s Creed Rogue, which came out on the same day as Unity in 2014, didn’t have any multiplayer modes. Multiplayer was then excised from the series going forward, as 2014’s Assassin’s Creed Syndicate was also a single-player-only game.

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