Skull and Bones 1 Year Later: Ubisoft's WORST Game?

Skull and Bones 1 Year Later: Ubisoft’s WORST Game?

Welcome to MojoPlays, and today we’re looking at the state of “Skull and Bones” roughly a year after launch.

The story of “Skull and Bones” began long before its release in February of 2024, way back in 2013, when Ubisoft revolutionized naval video games with “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag”. “Black Flag” remains beloved, many people’s favorite “Assassin’s Creed” game and arguably the best pirate game ever made. So, Ubisoft decided that it would make a multiplayer version of “Black Flag”, where you could sail the high seas with your friends, embarking upon a pirate’s life. It was revealed with a bombastic cinematic trailer at E3 2017, and people understandably assumed that the release was imminent. After all, it had already been in development for four years by this point, and since it was just an online version of “Black Flag”, how much longer could we have to wait?

A LOT longer, it turns out. “Skull and Bones”, for a while, was the industry’s SECOND most notorious piece of vaporware, after “Beyond Good and Evil 2”, another Ubisoft joint that, as of 2025, doesn’t look like it will ever appear. The story got more and more tumultuous behind-the-scenes, with the direction constantly shifting. It began life in the Caribbean, meaning it would be able to reuse the map of “Black Flag”, before moving to the fantastical realm of Hyperborea, which is a mythologized version of the North Pole the Ancient Greeks came up with, since they’d never been able to sail so far north. It was then brought back down to Earth properly and ended up finally releasing in the Indian Ocean, covering everything from a fictionalized version of the East African coast to an equally fictional Indonesia and even regions reminiscent of India itself.

Plagued with delay after delay, “Skull and Bones” finally emerged on February 16th, 2024, for a full $70 price tag. And, of course, it was full of microtransactions for cosmetics to make your ship and pirate captain look as silly as possible. But before it came out, it shed a true story mode and also had almost no PVP, putting people off even more. When you finally played the game, you were treated to a glorified crafting simulator. Most of what you did as you ground out those first ten infamy levels was pillaging supplies to build bigger, better ships that would enable you to sink even more powerful ships to get better supplies to build more ships, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with a good crafting loop, but the first twelve hours of “Skull and Bones” are JUST a crafting loop with little else. There was a very flimsy story via the quest givers at the two pirate dens, but it wasn’t remotely interesting or memorable. The naval combat was just as addictive as you’d expect from a game based on “Black Flag”, but “Black Flag” also had plenty of land-based activities, fun characters, and a great story. After reaching the highest rank of infamy you unlocked a complete foundry and smuggling system to get more money to buy more cosmetics, which does add depth but much of the high-level events aren’t well balanced for just one person. Unless you have a whole fleet of friends to fight with, you might find yourself locked into boring battles that take way too long – that’s if they don’t crash halfway through.

Following this lacklustre launch, in which it was hard for anybody to argue that “Skull and Bones” was worth anywhere close to $70 OR was a “quadruple-A game” as Ubisoft insisted, “Skull and Bones” faded from public view. Its numerous seasons that added new villains, items, events, and gameplay systems – not to mention sea monster bosses – came and went without much fanfare, and we’re now deep into season 4, the final season announced with the year 1 roadmap at launch.

Though it’s easy enough for us armchair game developers to say that Ubisoft should’ve released “Skull and Bones” as a freemium title, since it’s still full of microtransactions and has a “Smugglers Pass” anyway, they may have made even less money that way. Its development allegedly cost $200,000,000 and we know that it was a loss. Unless it was the actual greatest game of all time, it’s doubtful it would have made that money back. Though, going by how people are more forgiving of “Skull and Bones’” minimalist content when it has free weekends, it may have been able to build an even bigger audience with a freemium model. It’s true that it’s often on sale for half price or less, but even then, it’s hard to justify spending the money since the game is going to try and go through your pockets a second time as soon as you boot it up. There are WORSE games out there than “Skull and Bones”, but the game’s failure and the middling release of “Assassin’s Creed Mirage” a few months before were just a harbinger of dark days to come for Ubisoft.

Ubisoft saw many more high-profile failures in 2024. There was “XDefiant”, which unlike “Skull and Bones” has been shut down, so “Skull and Bones” must have SOME players; there was a new “Prince of Persia” side-scroller, which was a critical darling but sold poorly; and, of course, there was “Star Wars Outlaws”. It’s difficult to understand the backlash to “Star Wars Outlaws”, but it seems like people are just tired of Ubisoft games being Ubisoft games and want something different. They’re too used to that formulaic approach. All of these flops have led Ubisoft to both delay “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” numerous times – something previously unheard of in the franchise – and to look for someone to buy them. Most rumors suggest that Tencent is chomping at the bit to get a piece of Ubisoft, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see Ubisoft sell to the mega-conglomerate – awful as that would be.

The company has also weathered some other big scandals in the last few years, including a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal in 2020. This remains ongoing because most of the game developers named in the complaints haven’t even left the company, they’ve just been shuffled around; it remains unclear whether Ubisoft has actually fixed its internal culture or not.

But what’s “Skull and Bones” like now, in 2025? Well, it’s still not been made freemium. This seems like a no-brainer, but it would be hugely insulting to all the people who DID cough up the money to buy it, and Ubisoft would have to decide whether to issue refunds or not. Knowing what we know about triple-A publishers, we doubt that it would; it’s not like Blizzard offered any refunds when “Overwatch 2” went free-to-play and replaced its predecessor.

Unlike other disastrous launches in recent years, “Skull and Bones” hasn’t really changed. There have been a lot of quality-of-life updates, including streamlining the map, making it easier to fast travel to certain events, and redeveloping the UI in other ways, but it’s not the kind of thing you’d notice if you’ve put the game down for a year and picked it back up.

It can still be a tedious slog to get through boss battles without friends, and a lonely life to sail the seas if you don’t have anyone to join you. On the other hand, if you DO have a group of friends willing to buy and play “Skull and Bones”, you might have a ton of fun! It’s definitely a game where your mileage will vary depending on whether you’re playing alone or not. But that’s not great, since plenty of other live service games – like “Destiny” or “Fallout 76” – are still fun whether you have company or not.

Ubisoft has added more ships and a deeper ship upgrade system, but still hasn’t added one of the biggest features players are clamouring for: swordplay. “Black Flag” may be beloved for its naval gameplay - massively improved from the clunkier version in “Assassin’s Creed III” - but it had plenty of things to do on land, too. Edward has swords, pistols, his hidden blade, AND he can climb around the ship’s masts and leap from one ship to another or dive into the sea. You can land at forts and explore every single island you find, not to mention that there’s wealth of optional side content in the various cities. Twelve years on, and “Skull and Bones” remains the thing it was always destined to be: a pale imitation of “Black Flag”.

Ubisoft confirmed back in summer 2024 that it has numerous “Assassin’s Creed” remakes in the works, but we don’t yet know which games these will be. The first two are obvious candidates that will easily make millions, but there have been suggestions that actually, it’ll be “Black Flag”, all so that Ubisoft can asset-flip “Skull and Bones”. Now, this is totally unconfirmed, but if they ever DO release a remake of “Black Flag”, it won’t take sleuths long to find out whether assets have been flipped or not. Considering Ubisoft has a long history of reusing assets across “Assassin’s Creed”, we’d be more surprised if there weren’t any repeats.

And there have been two more nails in “Skull and Bones’” coffin: the release of “Sea of Thieves” on PS5, and the reveal of “Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza”. After six years of “Sea of Thieves” only being on Xbox and PC, Rare’s pirate MMO sailed onto PlayStation and became an even bigger success. Can “Skull and Bones” pull off the same feat, since “Sea of Thieves” wasn’t all that well received at launch, either? And will everybody forget it exists when “Pirate Yakuza” launches?

Only time will tell whether “Skull and Bones” can rise from its own ashes, or if it’s already sinking towards a watery grave.

What do you think? Is Ubisoft doomed, or can they come back if “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” and these promised remakes appear? Let us know! And let us know whether YOU’RE still playing “Skull and Bones”, too.