Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag actor says Ubisoft threatened to sue him for blabbing about the remake that everyone and their grandma knows is coming

If I were writing the big book of maintaining morale, my number one rule for keeping the talent happy would be: don't threaten to take them to court. But those mavericks at Ubisoft have always done things their own way. According to Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag voice actor Matt Ryan (who played protagonist Edward Kenway), Ubi was a tad miffed when he got loose-lipped about the unannounced Black Flag remake we all know is coming. So miffed that the company threatened to sue him.

If you don't recall, Ryan was signing fan autographs recently when he cheekily announced that they "might have to beat [AC4] again" in the near future. Everyone and their dog took that as a hint at an upcoming remake of Black Flag, the same one that was also leaked by a merch-maker pretty recently. Heck, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot was about and about last year saying he wanted to make some AC remakes, so it couldn't be more of an open secret at this point.

And yet, apparently, Ryan kinda-sorta blabbing about it set Ubi on the warpath. In another, more recent video of Ryan signing autographs at a con, a plucky fan asked him for word on an upcoming remake. This time, a chastened Ryan simply said "I don't know, mate."

The fan, naturally, brought up the prior video where Ryan certainly seemed like he knew something. "The thing is," answered Ryan, "when that happened, someone was doing this," and gestured at a person recording the interaction. "I was being very free and open, but I didn't know that they actually were recording me on their phone. And then the company threatened to sue me. Yeah, so I say nothing."

Now, presumably (I stress presumably: this is all supposition on my part), Ryan would have signed an NDA with Ubisoft about any work he's done for any upcoming Black Flag remake, but you've gotta admit: that sounds like a pretty draconian response on Ubi's part. The Black Flag remake is the worst-kept secret in videogames right now; everyone knows it's coming, it's been leaked in multiple different ways, and even the company boss was gaily chatting about remaking ACs in the recent past.

The blowback from threatening the game's main (and popular) actor with legal action seems way worse than the blowback of that actor chatting about a game everyone basically already knows is coming. But hey, what do I know? Perhaps Ubi felt it had to put its foot down pour encourager les autres. It certainly seems to have done the trick: Ryan sure as hell wasn't letting anything slip in that most recent video.

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