While we might be one of the tiniest gaming outlets on the Internet, we do have “people” all over the place, and one of those “people” brought us a very juicy tidbit this morning.

Word on the street is that Ubisoft has quietly axed Michael Ironside (Sam Fisher) from the voice cast of the next Splinter Cell installment, Splinter Cell: Conviction. According to our source, Ironside himself doesn’t even know this yet.

We can only speculate regarding the reason for this alleged impending dismissal. Voice guys are some of the easiest talent to work with, because you just bring them in, have them read their lines, and pay them. The latter step in the process could be the issue at hand, but there’s no way of knowing for sure, and I would be pretty floored to get a statement back from Ubisoft saying, “We couldn’t afford him.”

We emailed Ubisoft’s PR, and as of press time, we have… not heard back from them. We will update this piece if we hear more.

Until then we’ve got to “get our butts above the hard deck” and remind you that this is an unconfirmed rumor at this point, but the source from which we obtained this information has never been wrong for us before, and we have no reason to doubt his/her conviction as to the validity of this information.

Now it’s time to sit back and pray this rumor is false. I’d rather issue a demerit to one of our “people” than face the prospect of a new Sam Fisher voiced by Gilbert Gottfried.