Ubisoft and Tencent Reportedly Scrapped Assassin's Creed Destiny, a Full Open World AC in Qin Dynasty China With an Umbrella Weapon

By CriticalPixel · 2026-10-16

Ubisoft has apparently been sitting on a second Assassin's Creed set in ancient China, and this one was not the mobile spin-off. According to MP1st, a cancelled project called Assassin's Creed Destiny was built as a proper console and PC game, with a big open world, stealth kills, the leap of faith and a spinning umbrella weapon that has already become the star of the leak. IGN confirmed the story on October 16 and described the footage as a full-fat AC rather than a side project. The game was reportedly a partnership between Ubisoft and Tencent, and it never got far enough for anyone outside the walls to know it existed.

Official Ubisoft artwork for the Assassin's Creed franchise incoming projects roadmap

What the leaked footage actually shows

The material reportedly comes from the portfolios of developers who worked on the game, which is how a lot of cancelled projects end up public. MP1st says it was led by TiMi Studio Group, the Tencent subsidiary that also works on Assassin's Creed Jade, and that most of what has surfaced traces back to a prototype from February 2025. The headline mission has a female assassin trying to reach a mysterious artifact inside a sacred palace that is under siege by the historical warlord Xiang Yu and his troops. There is also early work on a boss fight against Xiang Yu himself, with close-ups of his imposing halberd. That is a lot of ambition for something that was scrapped early.

Other clips show greybox test environments for combat abilities, a male character using parkour to take down enemies, and a UI dressed in ink-brush ability icons and a yin-yang emblem on the health bar. IGN reads the male and female footage as either a player choice of protagonist or a dual protagonist setup like Shadows, while MP1st notes it could simply be placeholder work. Nobody outside the project can say which, and that is worth keeping in mind before anyone treats a prototype as a design document. The umbrella weapon is the part everyone is talking about, and it deserved to survive longer than the game did.

Destiny and Jade share a setting, not a fate

Destiny was set in 206 BCE, as the Qin dynasty gave way to the Han after a brutal civil war, and IGN notes it likely would have followed Liu Bang's rise to power. Assassin's Creed Jade sits just a few years earlier, in 215 BCE, and is the mobile game Ubisoft announced in 2022 with Level Infinite, Tencent's publishing arm. Jade went quiet after a run of beta tests, then Ubisoft confirmed in March that it is still in development, and it has no release date. Ubisoft's own Assassin's Creed roadmap post lists Jade among several projects at different stages, so the Qin era is still getting a game, just the smaller one.

That same Ubisoft post says the company recently chose to pivot away from an early project and that the lessons are shaping what comes next. Ubisoft did not name that project, and nothing in the post connects it to Destiny, so treat any link between the two as speculation until someone at the publisher says otherwise. What the timing does show is a franchise pruning its slate. Between a cancelled flagship for China and a mobile game still waiting for a date, the Tencent side of Assassin's Creed has had a rough run.

Official screenshot from Assassin's Creed Shadows, the latest mainline entry, from its Steam store page

A pattern of cancelled Tencent and Ubisoft ideas

Destiny is reportedly not alone. MP1st lists Athena, a third-person action game based on Greek mythology that was in development between 2024 and 2026, and Invictus, a stylized cyberpunk open world directed by Assassin's Creed veteran Ashraf Ismail at TiMi's Montreal division. Invictus ended when that branch closed earlier this February. TiMi also announced a restructuring a month before the Destiny prototype was made, splitting the studio into four teams, and the game was cancelled not long after. Add Tencent's reported shift away from lower margin Western franchises toward domestic releases and casual party games, and the pile of dead projects starts to look less like bad luck and more like policy.

Jade felt that shift too. MP1st reports that hundreds of its developers were moved over to the party game DreamStar, which would explain a lot about the long silence. Tencent also holds a 25 percent stake in Vantage Studios, the Ubisoft subsidiary that oversees Assassin's Creed and other big IPs, so the two companies are tied together well beyond one cancelled game. IGN also points out that the next big mainline entry, Assassin's Creed Hexe, has its own reported troubles, including the departures of creative director Clint Hocking and game director Benoit Richer, and a leak suggesting its magical abilities were cut. That is a lot of turbulence for one franchise in one month.

What the community is saying

Reaction so far is limited and mixed, so there is no consensus to report. The post from AC fan account AccessTheAnimus showing off the umbrella-like weapon pulled about 350 likes, and replies range from jokes about the hidden blade to praise for the look of the prop, with one reply arguing that Jade is the project that should have been cancelled instead. Others asked what happened to Jade, and the account answered that there has been no update since March. A few replies were glad Ubisoft seems to be stepping back from straying too far from the series roots. That is a handful of voices, not a verdict.

Second official screenshot from Assassin's Creed Shadows showing the open world scale Ubisoft built for feudal Japan

The CriticalPixel take

Here is the annoying part. Ubisoft shipped Assassin's Creed Shadows in March 2025 after years of players begging for feudal Japan, and the Asia setting clearly sells. A fully playable AC in Qin China with an umbrella weapon and a warlord boss fight sounds like the pitch that fans have wanted since the series started roaming outside Europe. Instead the one project that reached a prototype got scrapped, while a mobile game with a missing release date survived. That is a publisher choosing the cheaper, quieter option, and then telling everyone the roadmap is healthy.

To be fair, none of this is official. The footage is reportedly from developer portfolios, the details come from MP1st and IGN, and Ubisoft has not confirmed the name Destiny. A prototype from February 2025 is also an early look, and cancelled games always look better in a highlight reel than they would have felt after four years of production. Still, the leak tells you something about the state of the Tencent partnership and where Ubisoft's priorities sit right now. If you wanted a console Assassin's Creed in ancient China, the most you can hope for today is Jade on your phone, and that is a rough trade for the people who actually wanted the umbrella.