Ubisoft has fired Patrice Desilets (Assassin's Creed creator and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time lead) shortly after acquiring THQ Montreal. They've indefinitely suspended production on 1666. Many folks who follow the industry have noted that big publishers will often to that to wrestle control from developers, effectively stalling their rights to pursue other options, such as shopping the project around to another publisher, when they don't see eye to eye.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/15/4333860/ubisoft-1666-suspends-production-indefinitely-firing-patrice-desilets

Desilets said "Ubisoft's actions are baseless and without merit. I intend to fight Ubisoft vigorously for my rights, for my team and for my game." Very cool to see him stand up for his work.

It's crazy to think that Bethesda Softworks did the same thing to Human Head Studios, when they stopped working on Prey 2 in late 2011. They're just sitting on a nearly complete game for 18 months. In other circumstances, Human Head could take elsewhere and finish it off like Sleeping Dogs developer, United Front Games did when things fell through with Activision. We probably could've been playing it by now! As it stands, Ubisoft and Bethesda have to present themselves as having some kind of intention of finishing the game, when they know that's never going to happen. They do this solely to prevent the rights reverting back to Radar Group/Human Head and to Patrice in Ubisoft's case. It all seems very petty to me. What's with publishers these days?