Assassin's Creed's multiplayer Invictus project is reportedly disliked by its development team, according to a leaker and streamer who claims to have received that information from one of the developers at Ubisoft. While the Assassin's Creed franchise's latest installment, Shadows, received a generally positive reception, Ubisoft has seen multiple flops and revenue losses over the past two years, and if true, this new report on Invictus doesn't do much to raise confidence.
First revealed back in 2022, the standalone multiplayer Assassin's Creed title, Invictus, was just one of several upcoming games in the franchise at that time. Multiple Assassin's Creed games have included multiplayer modes, starting with Assassin's Creed Brotherhood in 2010. But when it was first announced, Invictus seemed to excite a lot of fans, with the potential of a full game in the series built from the ground up around multiplayer gameplay mechanics, rather than having them added onto a game that was primarily built as a single-player experience.
Classic Assassin's Creed Games Could Be Getting Big Upgrades
Ubisoft may be working on some significant upgrades for some classic Assassin's Creed games, offering a much-improved experience for players.
Ubisoft Devs Reportedly Aren't Happy Working on Invictus
Going on four years later, a new claim states that the development team working on Invictus doesn't seem to share in that excitement. Assassin's Creed leaker and gaming streamer j0nathan claims that a source inside the development team has told him it's possible that everyone working on the ambitious Assassin's Creed multiplayer game isn't happy with it. "Only the managers will probably keep smiling and singing the praises of this project," the unnamed source is quoted as saying, adding that they don't even understand what demographic Invictus is supposed to appeal to.
There seems to be a lot of reasons behind the alleged internal discontent surrounding Invictus. The unnamed source is said to have criticized its "ridiculous animations, hideous and cartoonish characters (their faces are just as awful), idiotic sound and visual effects," pointing to potential problems with the project. The source was also dismayed with the reported inclusion of combat arenas as one of the game's features, which sounds like a big departure from Assassin's Creed games' traditionally stealth-first style of gameplay.
To give some backstory, j0nathan has long been a critic of Invictus, and his release of this new information seems to align with many of the doubts he had previously expressed about the upcoming game. In late 2024, the leaker reported that Invictus would follow a format similar to Fall Guys, Mediatonic's hit 2020 battle royale game. In that report, j0nathan had mentioned Invictus would include a variety of 16-player knockout matches, including free-for-all, deathmatch, and parkour speed challenge game modes. He reiterated some of these claims in his latest report, predicting Invictus to be a "dead on arrival" flop while also criticizing the game's reported usage of Fortnite-style visuals for its characters and environments.
For its part, Ubisoft has kept information leaks about Invictus to a minimum since its initial announcement, including releasing no official images, so it's very difficult to determine if any of the new information being released is rooted in fact. In response to the recent claims, Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson has rebuffed some of j0nathan's statements about the upcoming game, particularly those related to its visuals. Henderson wrote via Twitter that early impressions made Invictus look like a lot of other games in the Assassin's Creed franchise, albeit with slightly reduced graphical fidelity, and that a Fortnite-style presentation would be unbelievable unless Invictus had been "drastically changed" since he last laid eyes on it. He also cautioned against taking information from a single, anonymous source, especially if that source appears to be a disgruntled development team employee.
For now, fans will have to keep waiting for their first look at Invictus, which should help them make a more informed decision about the game. In the meantime, there are reports floating around stating that multiple older Assassin's Creed games could get 60fps upgrades, and rumors of a remake of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag have been acknowledged by Ubisoft's social media team, though its existence remains officially unconfirmed.