Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla has lost its creative director, Ashraf Ismail, just months ahead of its launch.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Ubisoft’s Ismail said he will resign from his post “to properly deal with the personal issues in my life.”
Ismail didn’t say what precipitated his decision, but tweets surfaced over the weekend, implicating him in extramarital affairs and suggesting he hid his marital status to others.
“The lives of my family and my own are shattered,” he said in his tweet. He added that he wished his former team at Ubisoft “all the best” and that they didn’t “deserve to be associated” with his alleged impropriety.
“Ashraf Ismail is stepping down from the project to take a leave of absence,” Ubisoft told Digital Trends. “The development team is committed to delivering a great game in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.”
Ismail’s resignation comes just two days after developer Techland parted ways with writer Chris Avellone after several women over the weekend accused him of sexual harassment. In a statement, Techland said that it takes “matters of sexual harassment and disrespect with utmost care, and have no tolerance for such behaviors.”
On Sunday, Twitch said it also takes “accusations of sexual harassment and misconduct extremely seriously” after several people said the company has ignored instances of abuse by the platform’s streamers. A growing number of Twitch streamers have called for a Twitch blackout to recognize the sexual harassment victims and celebrate their courage for speaking out.
Between Friday and Monday, the New York Times identified more than 70 people, mostly women, who tweeted about their experiences with sexual harassment and abuse in the gaming industry. Streamer and content creator Jessica Richey has since published a spreadsheet documenting all of the gaming industry stories of sexual abuse, harassment, and assault shared since Friday. As of this writing, there are more than 210 stories on the list.
Ubisoft hasn’t named Ismail’s replacement, and it’s unclear what his departure will mean for the game.
Valhalla is expected to launch by the end of 2020. The game is the successor to the 2018 hit Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and will center on Vikings. It’ll be available on both current- and next-generation consoles as well as the PC.
Updated on June 24, 2020: Added Ubisoft’s statement and included more details.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.