Ubisoft Reportedly Cancelled Assassin's Creed Game Set Post-Civil War - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 08 October 2025 / 3,986 Views
Ubisoft reportedly cancelled an Assassin's Creed game in July 2024 that would have been set during the Reconstruction period that followed the American Civil War, according to The Game File that spoke with five current and former Ubisoft employees.
The protagonist would have been a Black man that was formerly a slave in the South and moved west to start a new life. He would return to the South after joining the Assassins to fight against the Ku Klux Klan.
"In this Reconstruction-era Assassin's Creed, gamers would play as a Black man who had been formerly enslaved in the South and moved west to start a new life," reads the report.
"Recruited by the series' Assassins, he would return to the South to fight for justice in a conflict that would, among other things, see him confront the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan."
Three of the sources stated the game was cancelled for two reasons. This included concerns of the political climate in the US that was becoming more tense and that online backlash of Yasuke in Assassin's Creed Shadows, a historically-inspired Black samurai.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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You cannot just teach history to republicans and expect zero backlash.
The irony being Democrats would've been the bad guys in this game lol, but I doubt MAGA would even be aware of the history.
As much as I can't stand Ubisoft, should've stuck to their guns. Sounds like an interesting enough premise.
MAGA is aware. They keep bringing up the Democratic Solid South. What keeps getting ignored/overlooked is how the votes on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 broke down by party AND geographical location, and the long term effects of Barry Goldwater voting against the Senate version of the CRA. Remember, he was the Republican candidate for POTUS that year.
Over 80% of Republicans in both the House & Senate voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, compared with 60-close to 70% of Democrats....
Now break it down by geography. Because that was more important than party affiliation in that vote. How many Southern Republicans voted for the CRA? There weren’t many at the time, but there were a handful in the House and one in the Senate. How many Northern Democrats voted against it versus how many Northern Republicans? And more importantly, how did that affect the 1964 presidential election? Remember, one of those “no” votes came from the guy who was running as the Republican nominee for president that year.
Can we stop pretending the 60s wasn't 60 years ago...
Party alignments have changes drastically since then.
Most people claiming to be on the Right or Left wouldn't recognize their own party from 60 years ago...
Heck, most of you wouldn't even recognize your own parties from 10 years ago...
Yep. If you look at a map of the votes, the vast majority of the "nay" votes for CRA '64 came from the South. The vote was divided by geography, not by party.
In the House, the states that were Confederate territory or were represented on the Confederate flag (i.e., the 11 states of the CSA, plus Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma) were a nearly entirely solid voting block against the CRA, and represented the vast majority of "Nay" votes. Most Southern Democrats voted against the CRA, as did every single Southern Republican. Outside the South, the share of Democrats voting "Yes" was much larger than the share of Republicans voting "Yes," with only a single Democratic "nay" vote: Walter Baring of Nevada, a conservative who typically voted in line with the Southern Democrats.
We see the same thing in the Senate, with the Deep South being a voting bloc against the CRA. Both Senators from ten of the eleven actual Confederate States voted against it (Texas was split; Republican John Tower voted "Nay" while Democrat Ralph Yarborough voted "Yes"). Five of the six "nay" votes outside of the South were from Republicans, with the only Democratic "nay" vote being Robert Byrd of West Virginia (so Southern-adjacent).
In Arizona, the vote in the Senate was split. Goldwater (R) voted "nay" and was one of the other five Republican "nay" votes from outside the South. Carl Hayden (D) voted "yea." And again, Goldwater was the Republican nominee for president in 1964. Other than his home state of Arizona, he carried the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina in the general election. Goldwater's justification for voting "nay" was "states' rights."
1964 was also the first year the "Solid South" broke heavily for the Republicans because of Goldwater voting against the CRA. While the overall election was a landslide, Goldwater picked up Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina in addition to his home state of Arizona, and the vote was really close in Florida (Miami & the Tampa Bay area pushed LBJ to a narrow victory). It was the first time Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina voted Republican since the end of Reconstruction, and only the second time Louisiana had done so (the other time being Eisenhower in '56). Southern whites turned against the national Democratic Party in a big way that year, which was leveraged by Nixon in '68 & '72.
Conservative Southern Democrats in Congress managed to stick around for longer since most of them voted against the CRA, but those so-called "Boll Weevils" either defected to the GOP or eventually retired and were replaced by Republicans. By the 1994 midterms, the "Solid South" had basically flipped almost entirely Republican.
It wasn't until recently that liberal Democrats have made headway in parts of the Deep South as the nation's electoral geography has become more urban vs. rural rather than North vs. South. Virginia flipped blue in 2008, and rapidly-growing major metro areas in Georgia and North Carolina have pushed those states in a leftward direction (Texas was showing a similar trend for a while as well, at least in presidential elections, but that may be stalling).
A lot of the California transplants coming to Texas are no longer Silicon Valley techies, but disgruntled Republicans. The transplants actually voted more red than "native" Texans. Though there is also a trend of many them finding out that Texas isn't all that and a bag of chips and heading back to California.
Oddly enough, some conservatives, typically Southern "Lost Cause"-ers, will actually claim that it was Lincoln where everything went wrong. They of course vote Republican today despite hating the early Republican Party, and would have voted Democratic prior to 1964. So, they at least tacitly admit the party switch of the 1960s-90s was a real thing. And it was indeed real.
I'm not so much concerned about who was waving Confederate flags 70 or 100 or 150 years ago. I'm more concerned with who is waving them today, and for my entire life it's always been conservative Republicans (Source: I was born in Georgia and live in South Carolina). That's confirmation enough that the party switch did indeed happen.
I spent a large part of my life in Oklahoma, so I hear you there. Right now there's a huge shit storm there over their recently departed state superintendent, who had aspirations of being governor next year. That's the guy who wanted to buy Bibles for the classrooms, brought in PragerU, and pushed an "anti-woke" agenda. He's now under investigation by the state attorney general.
MAGA would have completely lost their shit over this one.
So..... you think there are no racist people among democrats?
I am pretty much sure its 50/50 when it comes to racist POS humans among both sides,
If you think otherwise, then you just live in some imaginary fairy land.
Why would even a single racist vote for a party that is relatively pro-immigration, gave the country a black president and has Muslims in congress, when they could be voting for the party that builds walls, bans Muslims and throws out South Americans for having tattoos?
It might have been 50/50 at one point but one side has been actively courting the racists and it’s almost certainly about 99/1 now.
Delusion here is unbelievable. That is all i am going to say.
Ah, fully indoctrinated I see. I hope you get better soon.
I am not american so i dont know how the heck am i going to be "indoctrinated" . But if you think so, all power to you. Your responses go sooo well with the last part of your name.
Neither am I, I have no horse in this race. I’m just very curious why you think 50% of the racists in any country would vote for the party that’s actually pro-immigration and filled with the most racially diverse groups of people. It’s just basic maths. You vote for the party that’s actually delivers the things you want.
If we were talking about random samples or like groups of people arranged by what football team they support, then you’d likely find an evenly balanced spread of racists. It’s not a random sample though, people have self selected into their group based on their political beliefs.
You first need to recognize that far less than half of the country votes in Congressional elections, and only recently has it gotten to the point where a pretty high percentage votes in presidential elections. It's still less than half of the country though (154 million people in 2024, from a population of 341 million).
Anyway, as an American that wouldn't vote for a Republican or Democrat if you paid me, I can say with near certainty that many Democratic party voters and activists would say that they are not racist, even though some of them are. Similarly, fee Republican voters would say that they are racist, even though some of them are.
It also depends on exactly what you mean by racist. If you mean people that are going to go around using slurs and things like that, you're certainly going to find more of them in the Republican party. But, if you mean people that treat others differently on the basis of race, I think it's pretty evenly split, with possibly a majority in the Democratic party.
If I understand you correctly, you're saying that there are only two positions in the world and everyone lines up perfectly with one of the two political parties? Because that's hard to believe.
I remember a customer coming in with two black guys, they seemed to be friends, but as soon as the others left, he said, "god, I fucking hate (n-word)." He was Mexican. What if he was a racist who is also pro-immigration? How does that line up with your model?
I've also known several black people who are extremely anti-homosexual, including a guy who beat up his brother for being gay. Which party do you have them as members of? Or the wealthy white Democrats who vote to keep the poor out of their neighborhoods because their idea of "diversity" is more theoretical than practical?
I'm pretty sure that 99/1 thing is pure fantasy.
Sort of like how the party of protecting the children is actually the one filled with paedophiles?
I get what you're saying but you're anecdotal evidence isn't really going to do much heavy lifting here.
Let's be more specific then, the kind of racists who'd be offended at playing a black guy killing KKK members are likely to be 99% Republican, or not voters at all.
It might only be 90/10 then overall.
Nah, you don't, because you'd rather be comfortably cushioned by your prejudices rather than face the reality that tens of millions of people are very, very different, with very different priorities. Then again, I suppose some people do let the side they choose decide their opinions for them since it doesn't take much effort to be a tool. Regardless, I look forward to more made up statistics in the future.
Yeah, people are different, have different priorities yadda yadda yadda.
Racists are highly likely to vote for the party peddling anti-immigrant and xenophobic policies though. That’s not rocket science.
Also, you don’t seem to be getting the distinction that saying almost all racists vote for the Republican Party is not the same as saying almost everyone who votes for the Republican Party is racist. Obviously lots of non-racists also vote for them. People who just believe in fiscal conservatism or whatever.
But both the Republicans and Democrats are peddling anti-immigrant, xenophobic policies.
The Metacritic user review section for this game would’ve been the saddest place on the Internet lol. The would've called a game that featured slaves in Reconstruction era USA “woke” lol.
In present day US, it's strongly possible that Trump would just straight up ban this game in the same way that he is banning history from museums.
He wouldn't ban it, he'd just say that he's going to do it in an "off the cuff" manner to judge how much outrage he'd get if he decides he was being serious the whole time.
I don't like Yasuke's inclusion as a playable character in Shadows, but I would absolutely not have had an issue with playing as a black man in a setting where it makes sense - and the US has a very large black population, and the suggested setting for the cancelled game sound interesting enough to me. I feel like there's a strong assumption that everyone is either strongly supporting all diversity measures or a racist, which led to this cancellation. I just think that assumption is probably not true (although I get it, polarization is going strong today, so it's also probably truer than it should be - especially in the US, which would definitely have been the main target audience for this game).
I didn't realize finding out you were working for Aliens in AC1... "Made Sense" lol
AC has always been a work of fiction with minor historical elements.
I don't recall there being any aliens in the series. Also, the historic part has always been quite important to me, and I've liked the portions that deviate from history too blatantly the least. Some artistic freedoms have to be taken for sure, I can understand that, but sometimes the series has definitely been pushing the limits. Maybe the historic part isn't more than a backdrop to you, but to me it's what breathes life to the whole series.
So what exactly was the issue with Yasuke's as a samurai in the game. Historically he did obtain that role.
AC isn't a historical game and it doesn't even pretend to be. The only thing that is true to history is the look of the locations. There may be some reference to the time period but you are still some assassin going around killing that has nothing to do with history. Just wondering would you have had the same issue if the character was a white male named William Adams and he rose to become a samurai.
Admittedly I haven't played Shadows yet, but I have a hard time imagining playing as the character that sticks out like a sore thumb unlike any other is going to immerse me in Japanese culture of that time period as well I'd like. So yes, I would absolutely have had an issue with a while male as well, although it would definitely have been a less peculiar choice due to not sticking out as much and there probably being more white than black people in Japan at the time.
I have no preference for white people over black people, and the same goes for other ethnicities as well. Just the thought is bizarre to me. (To be fully transparent, I have some aesthetic preference tendencies, but that doesn't really matter unless I'm hooking up with someone, so who cares?)
"I have a hard time imagining playing as the character that sticks out like a sore thumb unlike any other is going to immerse me in Japanese culture of that time period as well I'd like."
Then don't, play as Yasuke in the couple missions where it's required, and play the remaining 99% of the game as Naoe. It will be no different than having to play as Connor's dad for 1% of the game in AC3.
I probably won't, once I eventually end up getting the game. That's more for gameplay reasons though.
My post was more to the point when you stated that historically you seemed to believe that Yasuke's being in the game was not part of history. If your preference isn't to play a black man in Japan that is something totally different. People feel all types of things so there is no need to query on that point.
His portrayal in the game sounds historical enough as far as I care. It sounds like there's some uncertainty surrounding him, probably due to him being a fairly insignificant character historically, and that's exactly the space that's suitable for artistic liberties. My preference is exactly not playing what might be the sole black man in Japan at the time.
Release the Extra Woke Cut!!
Yeah, that would have caused the mother of all shitstorms if released.
Ubisoft did the right thing. white americans are getting the impression that white people are being demonized by the woke cult. this would have added more to the fuel. ironically when it comes to white racism, white jews also contribute to the cause but only white none jews gets the blame.
I'm gonna have to ask for some clarification here about that "woke cult" remark. Are you saying that is a thing that exists and is a problem, or are you saying that's how right-wingers view it? Also, those comments about Jewish people seem kinda sus, so I'm gonna need clarification there as well. Are you blaming Jewish people for racism?
I ask because a few years ago you were making pro-Democratic/anti-Trump comments in Politics threads, then went radio silent on politics until last year when you made a comment in a Hogwarts Legacy article that sounded like a jab at trans people.
I mentioned jews in relation to my comments that white poeple are being demonized and it looks there is an agenda to bring past histories of black slave trade to hurt white people( I am hispanic). I mentioned the jews because they were also a big contrinutor to black slaves but somehow only whites get demonized when it comes to racism.
I am a christian conservative in an very bad situation since I am not pro democrats nor trump since it is becoming clear both served the zionists.
Why I mentioned the woke cult. I think there is a group behind the scenes which are behind wokism that are using our current potilical situation to keep dividing humanity by elevating one group and demonizing the other group thus endless
revolutions.
you can called me conspiracy theorist. that is ok.
For me it is becoming obvious we have been played.
"Why I mentioned the woke cult. I think there is a group behind the scenes which are behind wokism that are using our current potilical situation to keep dividing humanity by elevating one group and demonizing the other group "
Aren't you dividing people here when you blame jews and woke people?
"For me it is becoming obvious we have been played."
And yet you don't seem to realize how you're playing into it.
Bernie Sanders has been talking about this for decades. Create a culture issue - get mad about trans people existing or trans people in sports (despite how very few there are) or gay people getting married (despite not having any actual impact on your life) or any other thing. Divide the people, and make it harder to focus on the rich and powerful.
somehow only whites get demonized when it comes to racism.
I'm a white person. I have an uncle who thinks racism is natural, and I have a step grandpa who posted on facebook about how maybe we should bring slavery back, because he didn't like what some black person said.
I am quite certain that the vast majority of woke people you complain about are not trying to demonize white people, the way that I know a lot of white people demonize other people. People are calling out that bad behavior. They're not demanding that we should actually enslave white people instead. They're not demanding that we hurt all men. (At least the vast majority, you can always find at least a couple nutty people. There are a lot of left wingers who think that the location of the stars at their birth affects who they are.)
Yeah, releasing that in the current political and gaming climate would probably not have been a wise fiscal decision for the already struggling Ubisoft. You're basically ensuring that a significant chunk of American gamers wouldn't play it, and that is AC's biggest sales market. Better to focus on less controversial time periods when you're practically on death's doorstep as a company.
Crazy how we're now at the point where you can't kill one of the most notorious hate groups in history in a video game because it would upset racists.
I don't think the KKK killing part is so much the issue (though arguably it doesn't make much sense for the series, I can't see the Templars being members of the KKK, I don't see how going around lynching Blacks in random acts of terrorism would further their goal as an organization, the Templar order have been in some of the highest levels of government in every game so far, random terrorism doesn't seem like their style to me). The vast majority of people were fine with killing Nazis in Wolfenstein games and Indiana Jones, and the KKK is typically seen as comparable to the Nazis, so I just can't see very many people being angry about the KKK killing part, just the extreme racists whose opinion on a game nobody should care about.
The issues are moreso that a game with this setting means putting an official Assassins good guys/Templars bad guys stance on the Civil War itself, which could cause sales issues in the US South where the Confederacy is still very popular to this day. The Slavery issue people wouldn't care about too much (afterall Ubisoft already did a slave freeing DLC for AC4 and nobody batted an eye), everybody not already in the aforementioned small group of extreme racists knows that slavery was bad, but there were others issues being fought over in the Civil War, and Ubisoft taking an AC stance on North vs South would stir up controversy since those other issues the Civil War was fought over are still issues today, the belief that the Federal government has too much power and that more power should be returned to the individual states for instance. Then you have anti-woke movement in gaming right now, with people going around boycotting any game they see as woke, people are going to see a Black Protagonist going around killing whites as problematic, just like there were people that saw Yasuke going around killing Japanese as problematic in Shadows (especially in the wake of increasing Black on Asian violence after Covid, with a 339% spike in hate crimes against Asians from 2020 to 2021). Ubisoft's financial position just isn't where it needs to be for them to release controversial games right now. They're better off focusing on safer bets right now, like AC Hexe with it's 16th century Holy Roman Empire witch hunts setting (pretty much everyone agrees the Witch Hunts both in Europe and in the US were bad), and the remake of AC4 we know they are working on.
I highly doubt Tencent would have allowed it.
Seriously looking at this comment section it is very obvious why they won't make this game. It's also obvious why I stopped posting here ages ago and only show myself for news every once in a while. Holy crap look at this garbage.
Personally I wonder if they did not release it because of the political climate or because they just believe that it would not sell. At the end of the day if you are going to spend 100 mill or better on a game, you better have a good reason to believe there is a big enough market for it to sell.
