https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/10/09/an-assassins-creed-civil-war-game-was-canceled-because-of-yasuke-reaction-us-politics/

According to Game File, who interviewed multiple current and former employees, an Assassin's Creed game set to take place during the American Civil War was cancelled by Ubisoft this July, due to instability in the US and the backlash to Assassin's Creed Shadow's black protagonist Yasuke.

In the words of one Ubisoft employee, it was deemed "too political in a country too unstable".

On one hand....avoided another US centric North American centric AC game (I guess I'm burnt out of playing AC3, Liberation, IV , Freedom Cry and Rogue lol)

On the other hand, the concept sounded great (aside from it taking place in the US).

Half of those weren't even set in the US.

AC3 and Liberation were. Liberation even had a Mayan section would could make a cool game on its own if researched properly. But AC4 was Caribbean islands with Cuba and Jamaica being the main islands. Freedom Cry was a smaller Caribbean map centred on Haiti. And Rogue had New York but more time was spent in Newfoundland, east coast of Canada and the North Atlantic. North America centric sure, but not United States. 

Regardless of setting, I wish they would go back to these smaller worlds in video games. Everything is so massive in world size now, I love this series but everything from Origins onwards burns me out!

Also not sure how well the US Civil War would work in Assassin's Creed, it would certainly be very different to the Western style shooters that used it as a setting. I vaguely remember the Call of Juarez series was partially based on the US Civil War.

A Django Unchained type vibe would have been really cool.

The USA has in 2020-2021 and the last year or so been the closest to Civil War since at least the end of Jim Crow, if not way back in 1876 as reconstruction was ending and the election was super close.
A US Civil War game right now, especially from a mainstream franchise like Assassin's Creed would be a bad idea.

I'm actually a bit saddened by this, because it sounds like it would have been a pretty decent setting. I mean, I don't really care much about US history in general, and the civil war perhaps in particular doesn't interest me very much, but I'm sure the game could have told a good story. As someone not very knowledgeable of the US civil war, playing as a black character in this setting sounds like a particularly interesting approach to the civil war, considering the war's connection to slavery. Then again, there's no shortage of good settings for AC games, so this probably means something that interests me more will get the attention instead, so yay, I guess? I really don't like the political situation being such that you can't release a game like this though - but it was probably a reasonable call on Ubisoft's part, especially under the current administration.

As for Yasuke, I'm not sure if the middle ground if accounted for properly. There seems to be a bunch of people that agree all diversity without critique, and there seems to be a bunch of people that oppose almost any diversity blindly. But there's also a middle ground, which is where I feel like I belong, and I have a hunch people would like to lump me in with the two ends of the spectrum. Maybe the middle ground is small enough that doing so isn't meaningful in the big picture, but I would imagine there's enough of us to not lump together with either end of the spectrum. I'd almost bet someone is going to respond to this by trying to lump me in with the racist end of the spectrum because polarization - already was happening in the news section comments.

Yeah the culture war around this thing would have been next level, I don't blame Ubisoft for not wanting to get involved in that, given the backlash Shadows got for being far less topically risky.

Canning it was probably for the best under the circumstances, which is kinda insane given it would've hardly been controversial at all as recently as like 2013.

They go out of their way to make their games about race.
Instead of just making story telling or fantastic combat/boss fights and such.

Yes, it is unfortunately a risk to make a game, movie or any other product that accurately depict past race relations. Ten years ago you could still make a game like this, but now it would be part of the culture war. I think it would only really be controversial in the US though.

Sounds pretty interesting though, it is a pity they didn’t have the guts.

Well in this case it seems they went out of their way to NOT make a game about race. The setting and plot would be appropriate for what the series is about.