Ubisoft...You are beating a dead horse with Skull & Bones

"....Ubisoft is delaying Skull & Bones for the sixth time."

Jesus Cripes Ubisoft, just kill Skull & Bones - you're just beating an already head horse. You were making a game nobody wanted as you made it. It is too late to capture any enthusiasm for fans of Black Flag. And delaying this monstrosity anymore just makes it "less appealing" to people who still were mildly interested. Let it die.

I don't know, the idea of Black Flag without all the Assassin's Creed baggage is still appealing to me. The delays are not a great sign, but it's possible they are leading to improvements.

This is Ubisoft Singapore first game as lead developer having to navigate through covid in a country not know for AAA devlopment, we've seen games from bigger studios fail.

Considering they've delayed it again after the recent testing can only really be a good sign, most would have assumed they'd push it out and cut their losses, given they can't easily cancel it.

My understanding is that they have too many deals in place, including with the Singapore government, that they can't walk away from. They have to deliver a game, and thy also have to make it profitable enough to make up for the investments made into it. Otherwise they totally would have canceled it by now, but they are in too deep, probably know it'll not do as well as it needs to and are kicking the can down the road as long as possible in hopes something else hits big enough to recoup the losses they know they'll take. Sometimes you just can't get rid of a bomb.

think of it like the old 38 studios situation with rhode island- ubisoft got a pile of money from the singapore government to locate this studio there, but in return they owe certain milestones or they'll have to pay penalties or even give the money back (likely with interest.) we can assume its either a lot of money or the repercussions of burning their bridge with one of the wealthiest and best situated nations in the entire asian region are higher than the cost of just keeping it going for a bit longer.

Also consider that in some cases these deals require things like 'X jobs at Y salary over Z timescale.' they could simply be running out the clock on that deal. Thats what sunk the RI/38 studio things. they ran out of money without having created the jobs that were the core of the original loan (which was a 'job creation' program on paper, even if it was more of a slush fund for RI political folks to give to local celebs in function.)

I find it a little ironic that Ubisoft, the company that is a textbook example of beating dead horses like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry and Tom Clancy games, announced ONE original IP and that's the one that people get mad about and that's the one that apparently nobody asked for. Making games is hard, but I'd rather see them try than become another Assassin's Creed support studio.

The long development time doesn't exactly fill me with confidence but it's still the most exciting game Ubisoft has on their list of upcoming releases. If it ends up being bad then we are under no obligation to buy it.

Another delay.

At this point I think Skull & Bones is just an elaborate prank or performance art project. Is this a game that's actually going to come out?

Imagine being a PR person trying to be chipper and pushing this thing.

Oh good, I was worried that when I saw S+B on the EGS "Top Upcoming Wishlisted" list (release date TBD) that our long-running joke would be coming to an end.

I want an earnings call. I want to know how much money has been spent making this game, and I really want to know where the PvP-infested waters of Skull and Bones fit into today's oversaturated snack market.

Assuming they only have to release it to fulfill a promise to investors they might only have a skeleton crew working on it, so it's probably not costing them too much.

Took me a moment to realize that this thread wasn't created in response to the latest delay.

Anyway. Give it another ten years and Black Flag will be in that 20 year nostalgia sweet spot.

They'd be better off just turning it into Black Flag 2 at this point.

Aren't these the same guys who also claim they were working on Beyond Good & Evil 2?

What do you expect. Ubisoft is all over the place right now. Their Call of Duty killer game has also been delayed (and pretty much shut down), because Activision decided to do in COD3 what Ubisoft was hyping with xDefiant, allowing you to cancel slide and have better control of your character.

If this new Assassins Creed isn't hitting for them, I don't know what they do next. I'm personally in no rush to play it, even though most people say its decent.

If only they didn't have to divert quite so much to the legal department...

Yeah, I was really surprised reading "sixth", because we're up to 7 at this point. See you all in 9 months for number 8?

It's funny, I thought this was for sure coming out last November because of contractual obligations, then it slipped to March and I went "Oh, maybe Fiscal Year shenanigans then", and now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This feels like a project kept alive entirely by corporate inertia. The smart move probably would have been to cancel it somewhere around delay 2 or 3, but development continues because they've sunk too much into it and they might finally achieve their goal of a blackout on the Ubisoft Buzzword Bingo Board.

I just remember the last presentation I saw describing the presumed gameplay loop being almost painfully Ubisoft. It was like "You need to attack this ship so that you can interrogate the snitch to find out which town to attack so that you can get the doubloons to buy the map to find the lookout to discover the island with the treasure chest containing the flibbertygibbet. And that's how you get Infamy."

@therealturk: My understanding is that this is a game kept alive by a contract that Ubisoft made with the government of Singapore for subsidies to open a studio there. It clearly would have been canceled if not for this deal.

I think the actual smart thing to do would have been to shove it out the door to die as a 5/10 or whatever years ago. Give it the old Babylon's Fall treatment, though don't shut it down so early that people refuse to buy into future online only games. It would cost a lot less to keep a few empty servers up for 5-6 years than to keep redeveloping this nightmare into something that will never be good and probably wouldn't be popular if it was good because live service games have turned off too many players.

As a big fan of Black Flag and someone who thinks that pirate themes are underutilised in games, I used to get annoyed by these delays, but I've come to think of them as part of a comfortably predictable pattern in the universe. The year is 2073 and I am an old man. I stand on a windswept beach, flecked with ashes from the nearby burning ruins. Most of my friends have had to flee the country or died in the war. But at that moment, my cognitive implant buzzes. A notification in my retinal display informs me that Skull & Bones has been delayed for a forty-fifth time. I know that in spite of everything, the world keeps spinning. I let a circle of sand go into the vastness of the wind.

@gamer_152: I dont have a reply for you, but it seemed a shame to let such prose go unappreciated without a comment.

The main problem with Skull and Bones is that its a full game based off a mini-game mode in an Assassins Creed game, and it shows. I don't think many people will get on board with paying full price for a game that was part of a larger game. Especially, the people already burned out on AssCreed games, which is a lot. It was a bad idea from the beginning. But like some people are saying, they've come too far to give up on it now. What a mess.

@av_gamer: if I want to do the ship combat from Assassin's Creed, and only the ship combat, I'll go back to playing Rebel Galaxy!

I don't think the problem was that it was going to be just ship combat, which it was never going to be.

I think that the problem is that what people wanted was Assassin's Creed Black Flag but without the Assassin stuff and some fleshed out pirate ideas (maybe more complex hideaway building, actual trading systems, etc.)

What Ubisoft decided to make was Sea of Thieves but serious (note that Sea of Thieves has been very successful and remains popular with expansions and support to today, so it's at least an attempt to clone a profitable game)

What Ubisoft's new studio has yet to deliver is by all accounts a mess with no clear direction that tries to do too many things that don't mesh and doesn't work well.

Either Black Flag II or Sea of Thieves Gritty could have been profitable games. I don't think the concept was the issue.

Apparently it's in closed beta, it's real, and it works.

It seems pretty bad though. Apparently you do a lot of foraging and there's no hand to hand combat. I'll wait for reviews but I think what's going to happen is this will come out and I will completely ignore it like I do most Ubisoft games at this point. I won't say I don't like any of their output since I'm a moderate Assassin's Creed fan (I've played more Assassin's Creed games than the vast majority of people at least) and I dabble in Far Cry, but so much of their output it just bland.

Anyway, here's a dude talking about actually playing it!

No hand-to-hand combat what?

@chamurai: There's foraging! Who wants to swashbuckle when you can FORAGE!

I remember you, specifically, wrote a whole blog post about how you're tired of all these pirate games that have you swordfighting and boarding ships to raise the Jolly Roger and wanted a GOOD pirate game where you can sail around looking for resources to forage off islands and then do inventory management. You know, pirate stuff.

@bigsocrates: Am I being gaslit? 😂 I feel gaslitted.

Although with 10+ years with an account and 800+ forum posts I guess I at one point may have said some crazy stuff I can't recall.

"I took the most valuable thing he had. His Mind."

-Adam Driver, SNL

@chamurai: Gaslight? Moi? How dare you?

I'm just accurately describing your long term and well known position that the best part of pirating is sailing around looking for piles of wood to collect and then managing your inventory.

Your tag line on these forums is "piracy is best with encumbrance!"

@bigsocrates: I mean, it DOES have a catchy ring to it.