Ubisoft’s curiously low-key Assassin’s Creed announcement in Saudi Arabia

Exclusive: What the company's CEO recently revealed about AC Mirage in Riyadh, internal pushback earlier this year from Ubisoft workers over Saudi ties, and Ubisoft dodges the funding question again

The most recent announcement of an expansion to Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft’s crown jewel franchise, has unfolded strangely this year. A big question publicly—and a subject of discussion within Ubisoft—centers on the Saudi Arabian government’s involvement in its creation.

Ubisoft announced the add-on August 23, informing much of the world with a 4am ET Saturday morning tweet. That’s not a standard promotional time slot, even for a multi-national company headquartered in Paris.

The news at the time: Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the solidly reviewed 2023 adventure set in 9th century Baghdad—and the rare big-budget video game whose creators worked hard to depict the Arab world with respect—will get a free add-on adventure set in 9th century AlUla later this year. AlUla is located in what is now Saudi Arabia.

The timing of the announcement makes more sense in light of a less publicized detail: The Mirage news was actually broken that Saturday by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, as he spoke on stage in Riyadh at the New Global Sport Conference, a two-day event produced in conjunction with the Saudi-government funded Esports World Cup.

Those events are part of an ambitious and controversial multi-billion dollar investment into gaming by the Saudi government. They also follow Ubisoft management’s participation in a late 2024 meeting of Saudi and French political leaders.

On stage in Riyadh that Saturday morning, Guillemot was speaking about Ubisoft’s history, fielding a question about how influential the Middle East will be in gaming, even teasing the future of Ubisoft’s Far Cry franchise, when he was prompted by interviewer Kate Scott about an announcement he had about Assassin’s Creed.

He replied (speaking in English rather than his native French):