Skull and Bones

About

Skull and Bones is a pirate and naval warfare action game developed by Ubisoft that was released in February 2024 after years of hype. However, it was met with significant disappointment from fans, who criticized the release state of the game, including technical issues, frustrating mechanics and live-service features.

History

Following the release of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, Ubisoft began working on an expansion to the game's naval combat.^[1] The project spun into an independent game, and Skull and Bones was first announced at E3 in 2017 (first trailer shown below).

The game reportedly had a troubled development period, undergoing multiple delays. A 2021 report from Kotaku^[2] details that the vision for the game regularly changed during a harrowing development process, causing meaningful work to slow to a crawl. Eventually, the game got a release date of February 16th, 2024. Pushing back against criticism that the game would cost $70 despite having live-service elements, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stated it would be a "quadruple-A" game.^[3]

Reception

The game met with mixed reception upon release,^[4] with reviewers criticizing the disconnect of what it promised to be and what it turned out to be. PCGamesN^[5] wrote, "any fun to be had here is thrown off by the disjointed open world, a lack of personality, and the endless, extended fetch quests that seldom excite." In a slightly more positive review, PC Gamer^[6] wrote, "It has the makings of a great pirate game but it's hamstrung by live service orthodoxy. It doesn't compare favourably with the ten-year old game that inspired it."

Online Presence

Online, the game was met with similarly mixed reactions and many players were particularly critical of its price. On February 18th, 2024, Twitter user @JenBox360^[7] compared the $70 price point to viral hits Palworld and Helldivers 2, which both retail under $40, calling it "sobering." Her tweet gained over 3,000 retweets and 26,000 likes in one day (shown below, top). The same day, user @LegacyKillaHD^[8] tweeted a similar sentiment, gaining over 240 retweets and 2,100 likes in the same time frame (shown below, bottom). The game's subreddit has 23,000 subscribers.^[9]

Multiple YouTubers posted videos criticizing the game. On February 15th, 2024, YouTuber Upper Echelon called the game a disappointment, gaining over 170,000 views in four days (shown below, left). On February 19th, YouTuber GamingBolt did the same, gaining over 26,000 views in a matter of hours (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References