Every Tom Clancy game in order: 55 of them, and his credit is on just 10

Between 1987 and 2026, 55 games came out that were either based on Tom Clancy's books or carried his name in the title: Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, The Division, EndWar, H.A.W.X and a dozen one-offs. Forty-one of them were released while he was alive, 14 more after he died on October 1, 2013. Here is the number that made me write this: Clancy himself appears in the credits of only 10.

Below is every game in order, with what he actually did on it. Some he worked on. On some he was chairman of the board. On most, all that is left of him is a name on the box, a name Ubisoft simply bought in 2008. I checked the credits against MobyGames, dates and developers against Wikipedia and publisher pages, scores against Metacritic, and prices and reviews against Steam and GOG as of October 10, 2026. The full table of all 55 games and the charts are near the end.

Quick background, in case you came here from a game. Clancy ran a small insurance agency in Maryland and wrote in his spare time when his first novel, The Hunt for Red October, came out in 1984. Bestsellers about Jack Ryan followed, then the movies, and from the mid-nineties his own game companies. He died in 2013, aged 66.

1987-1991: five games based on his books, and he advised on one

The first Clancy game was The Hunt for Red October in 1987, made by the British studio Oxford Digital Enterprises and published by Argus Press Software. A submarine sim based on the novel, released on ten platforms from the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 to the Mac and DOS. Clancy is credited only as the author of the bestseller.

A year later MicroProse released Red Storm Rising, based on the novel Clancy co-wrote with Larry Bond. Sid Meier and Arnold Hendrick designed it, and this is where Clancy first shows up in the credits as a contributor: the Commodore 64, DOS and PC-98 versions list him under Technical Advice and Research. What exactly he advised on, the sources do not say, and I am not going to make it up. If you want the rest of Meier's catalogue, we have every Sid Meier game in one place.

The video loads from YouTube (Google) when you press play. Privacy policy

The other three games of the period barely involve him. The 1990 and 1991 versions of The Hunt for Red October follow the Sean Connery film, one for home computers, the other for the NES, Game Boy and SNES. Capstone Software turned The Cardinal of the Kremlin into an economic strategy game, with Clancy in the thank-you list.

1996-2000: SSN and Red Storm, the four years he was really involved

Tom Clancy's SSN arrived in November 1996, the first game with his name in the title itself. It was put out by Simon & Schuster Interactive, the studio Virtus and Clancy Interactive Entertainment, his own company for multimedia projects. MobyGames credits him with the story and as executive producer, and he wrote the SSN book as a companion to the game. Eurogamer adds that Clancy was a fan of the Virtus game The Colony and one of the studio's early investors.

Right after SSN he founded Red Storm Entertainment with Doug Littlejohns, a retired Royal Navy officer who had consulted on SSN. Clancy became chairman, Littlejohns president. The name, obviously, came from Red Storm Rising. In 1997 Publishers Weekly reported a $25 million four-year book and multimedia deal through Red Storm, on top of $50 million for two novels.

The video loads from YouTube (Google) when you press play. Privacy policy

The studio's first game, in November 1997, was Politika, a Risk-like strategy game based on a Power Plays novel of the same name. Then came ruthless.com (1998), about a war between software companies, and the tactics game Shadow Watch (2000), all under the Tom Clancy's Power Plays label. Funny detail: Clancy is not in the Politika credits at all, and in ruthless.com he is listed only as chairman. The ruthless.com book was written after the game, not the other way round.

1998: Rainbow Six, an 85 on Metacritic, and a plot Clancy took for his book

The key game in this story. Littlejohns told Eurogamer how it started: at a Red Storm retreat in 1996 he and Clancy were having a whiskey one evening, and Clancy said he was toying with a book about a hostage rescue team. They talked until 3am and came out with the idea of a permanent international unit. Both the novel Rainbow Six and the game grew out of that night, and both came out in 1998. MobyGames credits Clancy with the Original Concept.

What follows is my favourite part. Lead designer Brian Upton told Eurogamer in December 2015 that after the first brainstorm Clancy "hardly engaged with us at all", and that Clancy turned Upton's story into his own book. His agent just sent over a rough manuscript so the team could work in details. The one thing Clancy did insist on was the heartbeat sensor, because one of his experts told him it was a real device. Upton argued against it and lost. "Mostly he just ignored us," he said.

The video loads from YouTube (Google) when you press play. Privacy policy

The game came out on PC on August 21, 1998 and scored 85 on Metacritic from 13 reviews. Ports followed for the Mac, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Dreamcast and Game Boy Color. Today you can only buy it on GOG for $9.99, the original Rainbow Six is not on Steam. The sequel Rogue Spear (1999) was also Red Storm's, and again Clancy is credited as chairman, nothing more.

2001-2005: Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell, the first series with no book behind them

On August 29, 2000, Ubi Soft announced it was buying Red Storm. I could not find the price in any source, so I will not guess one. A year later, on November 13, 2001, Red Storm shipped Ghost Recon, the first big series with his name and no book of his behind it. The Ghost Recon novel only came out in November 2008, written by Grant Blackwood under the house pseudonym David Michaels. Clancy is not in the game's credits at all.

Ghost Recon is still sold on Steam for $9.99 and sits at 92% positive from 1,722 reviews. For a 2001 game, that is a lot.

The video loads from YouTube (Google) when you press play. Privacy policy

Splinter Cell launched on Xbox on November 18, 2002, and Ubi Soft created it in-house in Montreal, without Red Storm. Sam Fisher of the NSA is not a Clancy character; the novels about him started in 2004 under the same David Michaels name, the first two written by Raymond Benson. Metacritic has Splinter Cell on Xbox at 93, and Chaos Theory (2005) at 94 from 70 reviews. That is the highest score the brand has ever had.

The same years brought Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield (2003, 83 on Metacritic), Lone Wolf on PlayStation (2002, Clancy in the special thanks) and the movie game The Sum of All Fears (2002). Plus two mobile Rainbow Six games even fans rarely remember: Broken Wings and Urban Crisis.

2006-2013: five games in one year, and March 20, 2008

2006 was the peak: Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Rainbow Six: Critical Hour, Splinter Cell: Essentials on PSP, Double Agent and Rainbow Six: Vegas, five games in twelve months. GRAW got a 90 on Xbox 360, Vegas an 88. By then the Clancy name had turned into a genre label: special forces military shooter.

On March 20, 2008, Ubisoft made it official. Its press release said the company had bought the rights to the Tom Clancy name for games, books, films and merchandise, in perpetuity and free of future royalties. No price was given. Ubisoft only put a number on the savings: at least 5 million euros a year in operating income that used to go to royalties. Analyst estimates, from 60 million euros to 100 million dollars, stayed guesses.

The video loads from YouTube (Google) when you press play. Privacy policy

The first game after the deal was EndWar (November 2008), a strategy game where you order units by voice through a headset. It still feels bold, and the Ubisoft clip above shows it off. Then came two H.A.W.X flight games (2009 and 2010, both pulled from Steam), Conviction (2010, 85 on Xbox 360), Future Soldier (2012) and Blacklist. Blacklist came out on August 20, 2013, the last game Clancy lived to see.

One note on Double Agent. The console versions did well (85 on Xbox 360), but the PC version on Steam holds 35% positive from 1,961 reviews, the worst in the whole brand. I would skip it on PC.

2014-2019: Siege, The Division and Wildlands, games without their author

Clancy died on October 1, 2013. The Division was shown at E3 in June 2013, while he was still alive, but it came out on March 8, 2016, made by Sweden's Massive Entertainment. From there the brand ran on its own: Rainbow Six Siege (December 1, 2015), Ghost Recon Wildlands (2017), then The Division 2 and Ghost Recon Breakpoint (both 2019).

Siege is the big one. No story campaign, just five-versus-five matches, and ten years later it is the most alive game with his name on it: 1,561,121 Steam reviews, 82% positive. Since the Siege X update on June 10, 2025 it has been free to play, with only ranked behind a paywall.

The video loads from YouTube (Google) when you press play. Privacy policy

Put the two Rainbow Six games side by side and not much of the original idea survives: an international counter-terror unit and hostages. The map planning phase is gone, so is the novel. What stayed are doors you can now blow open and walls you can tear down.

Open worlds were a mixed bag for Ghost Recon. Critics gave Wildlands a 69, players were warmer at 78% of almost 116,000 reviews. Breakpoint got a 58 on Metacritic, tied with Essentials on PSP for the lowest score among the brand's big games. Next to that, The Division 2 looks like the best of the late era, with an 84 from critics.

2020-2026: shut-down servers, mobile games and the end of Red Storm

The last six years have mostly been mobile games and shutdowns. Elite Squad (2020) went offline on October 4, 2021, and Rainbow Six: SMOL left Netflix's catalogue in the summer of 2025. XDefiant started life as Tom Clancy's XDefiant, lost the name in March 2022, and shut down on June 3, 2025. The only big release was Rainbow Six Extraction (January 2022, 69 on PC).

2026 added two mobile games. Rainbow Six Mobile launched worldwide on February 23, and The Division Resurgence on March 31 on phones and August 5 on Steam, where it currently sits at 48% positive. And on March 19, 2026, Ubisoft ended game development at Red Storm itself, the studio Clancy founded in 1996. According to Game Informer, 105 jobs were cut and the studio was moved to support work on the Snowdrop engine and IT.

The video loads from YouTube (Google) when you press play. Privacy policy

Three games are announced: the turn-based Rainbow Six Tactics from Ubisoft Paris for 2027, a remake of the first Splinter Cell with no date, and The Division 3, announced in 2023. Four games were cancelled along the way, among them Rainbow 6: Patriots and Ghost Recon Frontline.

What Clancy actually did on games: 31 credit lines

MobyGames lists 31 credit lines for Clancy across 22 games. Six of those games are not Clancy games at all: Force 21, Dominant Species, Bang! Gunship Elite and Roswell Conspiracies were Red Storm releases from his time as chairman, plus a thank-you in Harpoon and a bibliography credit in Cold Waters (2017). Out of the 55 Clancy games, his name is in the credits of only ten.

Counting by credits, he did hands-on work on three: technical advice on Red Storm Rising (1988), story and executive producer on SSN (1996), the original concept of Rainbow Six (1998). A fourth line, "original story and characters" in the 2011 mobile game Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard, is a standard source credit rather than work on the game. After Lone Wolf in 2002 he is not in the credits of a single Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six Vegas, Siege or Division game. Wikipedia puts it carefully: the extent of his involvement in the Ubisoft games is unclear. I would put it more bluntly, but there is simply no evidence of any.

Every Tom Clancy game: the full list

Years are for the first platform. Expansions (Eagle Watch, Desert Siege, Athena Sword and eight more), ports and the Splinter Cell Classic Trilogy HD collection are not counted. "No" in the last column means MobyGames has no credit line for him; his name is still in the title.

Scores and reviews in three charts

Metacritic scores are for each game's best platform. That is why Siege shows 79 from PC rather than 73 from PS4.

Where to start in 2026

What to avoid: Splinter Cell: Double Agent on PC, with its 35% positive reviews. If you want that one specifically, the console versions were received much better.

More from this series: every Sid Meier game, which also covers Red Storm Rising, and every Steven Spielberg game, another name that means less on the box than you would think.

Read also

Every Sid Meier game: 106 in the credits, but he only led the first numbered Civilization

Every Steven Spielberg game: what he really made and where it is just his name