An image shows pirates looking at a giant floating timeline above the water.
Skull And Bones began life as a multiplayer-focused expansion for the excellent Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag from 2013. It then expanded into a larger MMO-like pirate game of its own. A decade later and after its 2017 reveal and multiple delays, Ubisoft’s online pirate simulator is still missing. And just yesterday, Skull and Bones was delayed again, with no new specific release date shared. How did we get here?
Skull And Bones was first revealed to the public through a big and showy presentation at E3 2017, complete with gameplay and cinematic trailers. It was clear that Ubisoft had a lot invested in the project. As of 2021, it was reported to have cost Ubisoft $120 million. Still, some employees who worked on the game said the game barely existed when it was shown, and since then has been reworked and changed over and over again as its developers try to figure out what the game is and how it will plays. Ubisoft is currently marketing it as an online pirate game with a focus on combat and exploration, which can be a fun experience. But with each delay, it seems less likely that the final product will be worth the wait.
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Skull and bones revealed, first delay
Ubisoft
As we mentioned earlier, Skull and Bones (then styled as Skull & Bones) was first revealed through multiple trailers and videos during Ubisoft’s E3 press conference in 2017. Many people liked the pirate boat stuff from Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and that felt like a game made up of all that cool boat stuff. When it was first announced at E3, Ubisoft gave it a 2018 release date – which just keeps getting funnier and funnier with each delay.
The story continues
In May 2018, about a year after its reveal, Ubisoft delayed Skull and Bones into its 2019-2020 fiscal year, which ran between April 1, 2019 and March 31, 2020. “Based on our digital transformation, growth in back catalog sales and excellent momentum of recent releases, Ubisoft decided to take more time to develop Skull & Bones to offer players an even more immersive experience,” Ubisoft explained about the delay.
Skull And Bones returns to E3, second delay
After that initial delay, Ubisoft returned to E3 2018 and showed off more of Skull and Bones, this time unveiling a PVE experience called “Hunting Grounds.” This version of the game and the previous version shown at E3 2017 were also eventually scrapped, according to our own reports. Ubisoft then delayed the game in May 2019, announcing that it would no longer ship in the 2019-2020 fiscal year, pushing the release date to sometime after March 2020.
Ubisoft
Skull and Bone’s official Twitter account confirmed the delay on May 15, 2019. “We’ll be batting the hatches and delaying the game’s arrival,” Ubisoft tweeted. “This is challenging news [sic] for all of us, but it’s what it takes to make Skull & Bones as awesome as it can be!”
Skull and bones disappear, third delay
After that delay in May, Skull and Bones went a bit radio silent and even missed E3 2019. The team was apparently going to focus on developing the game, and Ubisoft had other big games to advertise, advertise, and launch. However, when it reappeared, it was only more bad news.
On October 24, 2019, about four months after the previous delay, Skull and Bones was delayed again along with several other major Ubisoft games such as Watch Dogs Legion and Rainbow Six Quarantine. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillaume confirmed the news on a conference call with investors and said the pirated game won’t be released until sometime after April 2021.
Skull And Bones finally gets a release date, fourth delay
On May 11, 2021, Ubisoft execs went on a conference call again and once again had to explain that yes, the delayed pirated game was once again…postponed. This time, the game slipped from sometime after April 2021 to sometime between April 2022 and May 2023. Here’s what Ubisoft CFO Frédéric Duguet had to say about the delay:
We strongly believe in the creative vision of the team and they have been given an increasingly ambitious mandate for the game. The production led by [Ubisoft] Singapore has been making good progress over the past 12 months and the promise is better than ever. The additional time will allow the team to fully execute their vision.
In July 2022, Ubisoft finally set a specific release date for its online pirate game. He announced that Skull and Bones, after numerous delays, will launch on November 8, 2022 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Google Stadia, and PC. This also meant that the game was missing out on the last generation of consoles, which were around four years old when Skull and Bones was announced in 2017, but in 2022 they were almost a decade old.
Skull And Bones Gets New Release Date, Fifth Delay
It looked like maybe, just maybe, Ubisoft’s troubled pirate simulator would launch, but then on September 28, 2022, Ubisoft confirmed our own announcement and announced that the game was indeed being delayed again. The publisher’s new release date of March 9, 2023 pushed the game out of 2022. The delay followed a tech test in September that didn’t go well, with players reportedly saying progression felt shallow. Here’s what the developers had to say about the delay:
Our team is hard at work smoothing and balancing the experience ahead of the global launch. As a result, we have made the difficult decision to move the release date to March 9, 2023. We are very eager for all of you to get your hands on Skull and Bones and dive headfirst into the dangerous and exciting world of building your own pirate empire. In order to give you the best possible experience, we’ve decided to take a little extra time to make sure we can deliver just that.
Skull And Bones no longer has a specific release date, sixth delay
It all leads up to this week. Yesterday, Ubisoft announced that it had once again delayed the troubled Skull and Bones, and this time it didn’t give a new specific release date. Instead, the game is currently slated to launch in Ubisoft’s 2023-2024 fiscal year.
“While Skull and Bones is now complete, we’re using the remaining time until our launch to use feedback from our ongoing technical tests and the upcoming open beta to polish and balance the experience,” a Ubisoft spokesperson told Kotaku in an email. “To fully execute this launch, we are leveraging the full power of co-development studios already involved in the development process, including Ubisoft’s Paris studio.” Ubisoft Singapore remains the lead studio for Skull and Bones and the team is working full speed ahead on the game’s experience and development of its stable post-launch content.”
All in all, it’s a tough road to walk and I’m not confident it will end. It seems inconceivable that Ubisoft would delay Skull and Bones again, but at this point nothing seems impossible.
If Skull and Bones comes out this year, it will be a decade since the game began development. Since then, it’s been delayed six times, appeared at numerous different Ubisoft events and E3 showcases, and even outlasted Google’s streaming service, Stadia, which it was once supposed to launch on.
Today, in early 2023, it’s hard not to feel bad for the countless developers who poured years of their lives into this game and still have nothing to show for it. Hopefully, this will all lead to the happy ending of a good game, rather than the kind of frustration that causes servers to shut down soon after launch.
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