If you were hoping Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe was quietly charging toward a polished release, the latest rumor out of Insider Gaming is a cold bucket of water. According to sources speaking to reporter Tom Henderson, around 50 developers were pulled from the project last week, part of a deliberate effort to keep the budget in check.
A budget call, not a crisis (reportedly)
Here's the thing: the developers cut from Hexe weren't laid off. According to the report, they've been moved to Ubisoft's Interproject team, a kind of internal holding pool where staff have three months to be assigned to another project. If no placement comes through in that window, redundancy follows. It's a softer landing than a straight layoff, but the clock is ticking for those 50 people.
The decision to scale back apparently wasn't triggered by problems with the game itself. Sources suggest development has actually been going reasonably well. The cuts are framed as a proactive budget measure, trimming headcount before costs spiral rather than reacting to something going wrong.
The timeline, and why it might already be slipping
Internally, the team is said to be targeting June 2027. That's the optimistic read. Henderson, who previously reported a Holiday 2027 window for the game, notes that the staffing changes could push the release back to that later slot anyway. Losing 50 developers mid-production doesn't speed things up, regardless of how well the project was tracking beforehand.
This is based on unverified sources. Ubisoft has not officially confirmed a release date or publicly shown Codename Hexe in any meaningful capacity.
So the realistic range right now sits somewhere between June 2027 and the holiday season of the same year, with the latter looking increasingly plausible given the team's recent turbulence.
Leadership changes that keep stacking up
The staffing news doesn't exist in a vacuum. Codename Hexe has seen significant leadership churn over the past year. Jean Guesdon, now serving as head of content for the Assassin's Creed franchise at Vantage Studios, stepped in as creative director after Clint Hocking departed Ubisoft. Then, game director Benoit Richer also left recently, adding another layer of instability to a project that still hasn't had a public reveal.
Guesdon's arrival reportedly brought a shift in creative direction too. Earlier rumors suggested he pushed to remove or reduce the more overtly magical elements from the game, pulling it away from whatever supernatural tone the previous team had established. Whether that creative pivot contributed to any of the staffing decisions isn't clear, but the timing is hard to ignore.
What this means alongside the broader Ubisoft picture
The Codename Hexe situation lands in the same week that Ubisoft confirmed Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is launching on July 9th, giving the publisher a near-term win to lean on. Hexe, by contrast, remains a complete unknown to the public. No gameplay, no official release window, no real sense of what the final game looks like after all the creative changes.
The cancelled Project Alterra (the Animal Crossing-inspired Ubisoft title that was scrapped) is also part of this picture, since that's where some of the displaced developers are coming from. Ubisoft is clearly consolidating resources, and Hexe is one of the projects caught in the middle of that process.
For players who've been quietly excited about Hexe's dark, witch-trial setting, the wait just got a little more uncertain. Keep an eye on our gaming news as Ubisoft heads into summer, because if there's any window to finally show the game publicly, a major showcase would be the logical moment. For more context on where the Assassin's Creed franchise stands right now, check out our latest reviews covering what Ubisoft has shipped recently.
