Ubisoft responds to report claiming it’s signed a Saudi deal for fresh Assassin’s Creed Mirage content

Ubisoft has responded to a report that claims fresh content for 2023’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage is on the way, following investment from Saudi Arabia’s controversial Public Investment Fund (PIF).

The report, published by French financial newspaper Les Echoes, states that Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot secured PIF funding during a meeting last month in Saudi Arabia (thanks, j0nathan).

In a statement to Eurogamer today, a Ubisoft spokesperson declined to offer more detail, but did not offer a denial.

“We’ll decline to comment,” a Ubisoft spokesperson said. “We are focused on finishing Assassin’s Creed Shadows and excited for players to get to play it on 20th March.”

The PIF is an initiative designed as a way to diversify the country’s revenues via investment in foreign companies, with a large arm focused on the video games industry. It’s chaired by Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the controversial ruler blamed by the CIA for the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who has upheld the country’s notoriously poor human rights record.

Despite this, the PIF holds a notable stake in a swathe of gaming companies, including Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive, Nintendo, EA, Embracer, Nexon and Capcom.

Ubisoft has recently been seeking investment, as the company discusses its future with Chinese stakeholder Tencent and explores sale options.

Additional content for Assassin’s Creed Mirage is something of a surprise, considering Ubisoft’s upcoming push for the long-awaited Shadows.

Mirage, set in ninth-century Baghdad, was designed as a smaller project similar in scope to the Assassin’s Creed series’ earliest entries, and something of a palate cleanser after a trilogy of enormous Assassin’s Creed epics.

Released in late 2023, Mirage was primarily developed by Ubisoft Bordeaux, a team which is now building Claws of Awaji, the first 10-hour expansion for Assassin’s Creed Shadows that anyone who pre-orders the game will now get for free.

But DLC for Mirage could tie into Ubisoft’s plans for a more cohesive overall storyline for the series, found within its Animus Hub. This will launch alongside Shadows, and serve as a primary home for ongoing story content and free rewards. (Eurogamer recently got to take a deep dive into Assassin’s Creed’s new Animus Hub, and everything we know so far that it’ll contain.)

Shadows looks to tell a completely new story, with a modern day now set in the “near future”. Could fresh DLC for Mirage be used to tie up some dangling plot threads, perhaps – particularly what happened next in the series’ modern day, following the ending of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla?

Eurogamer recently went hands-on with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which our Katharine described as the series’ “biggest shake-up of the series in years”.