The Assassin's Creed franchise added competitive multiplayer in 2010 with Brotherhood and it's been an aspect of the games until now.
However, this year's instalments of the series, Assassin's Creed Rogue and Unity will not feature competitive multiplayer with the former being a single player experience and the latter adding co-operative play instead.
In a statement to Joystiq, the publisher explained why:
"With Assassin's Creed Unity, the pillars of the franchise have evolved thanks to the potential of new generation consoles. With that evolution, we wanted to bring a new type of multiplayer experience, which was asked for by fans and which we wanted to explore for a long time: cooperative gameplay.
"Our aim was to have a seamless single-to-multi experience: This is why we are not opposing single player and co-op; we have ancestral missions dealing with Arno's story and Brotherhood missions dealing with Arno's duties towards the Brotherhood."
In Assassin's Creed 3 Ubisoft did implement a 'Wolfpack' mode which saw teams of four players team up to kill their enemies before time ran out. The franchise's most successful online mode was probably its twist on Deathmatch, in which players tricked each other in crowded market places and mansions full of NPCs.
Assassin's Creed Unity is set to launch on October 28th for PC, PS4, and Xbox One while Rogue is set for release on November 11th and is coming to PS3 and Xbox 360.
And while it may not be official, the video below is a tongue-firmly-in-cheek hilarious look at what Assassin's Creed might be in the like Stone Age.