The player numbers of Skull & Bones are poor. But that might be misleading, as there will be new content in 2025 – an end is not in sight for Ubisoft’s AAAA game.
The last few years in gaming have not only produced a few big hits, but also a lot of flops. One of these flops is likely to have been Skull and Bones in the eyes of many, which previously presented itself boastfully as a “AAAA game,” only to fall far short of expectations. The great success seemingly did not materialize, and the forecasts were not good.
But now it has been revealed: even in year 2 after the release, there will be new content and the player numbers might not be so bad after all.
What is going on with Skull & Bones? Skull and Bones already struggled with many problems at launch. Not only did it consider itself, perhaps a touch arrogantly, a AAAA game
, meaning “even bigger than really big,” but the setting simply did not resonate well. Not to mention that there was also a lack of an engaging single-player campaign.
Many had already written off Skull & Bones, but for the developers, it seems far from over. At least that’s what the site Insider Gaming claims, which says it has internal sources.
According to them, a lot of new content is planned for 2025. This includes new PvP modes. Additional content will feature new Places of Interest (“POI”), new levels for the world, and more.
There are also supposed to be crossover events, such as with the remake of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag.
What about the player numbers? Looking at the player numbers on Steam, Skull & Bones is currently doing quite poorly. In the last 30 days, only about 200 people have been playing the game simultaneously, with peak numbers just over 400. That’s far from “good” numbers, and for other games, one would say: It’s dead, it’s not going anywhere.
However, you can also play Skull & Bones through Ubisoft Connect, and according to the anonymous source from Insider Gaming, “the actual player numbers of Skull and Bones might surprise people” – even though no specific number is mentioned. This implies that the game is not performing as poorly on other platforms as it seems on Steam. While that is rather unusual, it also doesn’t seem impossible.
Whether Skull & Bones will achieve the success that it should have as a big AAAA game remains to be seen. At least on Steam, this seems to be no longer a grand pirate adventure, but more akin to a sinking ship. But who knows – perhaps 2025 will turn out well after all, or the player numbers on other platforms are much better than those suggested by Steam.
Maurice Weber was also quite disappointed with Skull and Bones.
