• Table of Contents
  • Intro
  • New season
  • “Record player engagement”

Intro

Skull and Bones finally launched on February 13, 2024, more than a decade since the original announcement. The barebones pirate ship game disappointed just about everyone who touched it and Ubisoft CEO called it a “AAAA” game despite the obvious shortcomings. Now the company is back with another weird statement, claiming the troubled title achieved “record player engagement”.

New season

Ubisoft’s new claims about Skull and Bones came with the announcement of the inaugural season which brings QoL upgrades and a few features such as:

• Fighting Phillipe La Peste’s armada in seasonal events and eventually himself in a world event
• New world events include elite warships such as Opwelling and Mizerja or the mythical Zamaharibu and Rode Maangodin
• Season pass rewards from free and premium tracks

It is interesting to see Ubisoft attempting to go personal with the seasonal villain in a game so impersonal that you can’t even properly board an enemy ship.

“Record player engagement”

Ubisoft claims that Skull and Bones achieved record player engagement but the statement doesn’t actually reveal anything worthwhile.

“Since launch, Skull and Bones has achieved record player engagement, with over four hours of average daily playtime, the second highest ever at Ubisoft.”

The statement doesn’t reveal how many players subject themselves to Skull and Bones for 4 hours or longer per day which would likely point to a smaller base that inflates the average statistics. It is already known the game failed to attract a million players in total but there is no data about how many are still active or how many will be when the free trial passes. Similarly, it is not excluded that the free trial was nudging players towards higher engagement in order to wrap things up before they have to pay for the “AAAA” flop.

Another peculiar detail about the entire announcement is that the majority of comments on the trailer embedded above are positive and are seemingly from players looking forward to the first season. However, if you have a certain Chrome plugin that allows you to see dislikes, you will notice the ratio is rather unfavorable. At the time of writing it was 533 likes versus 1,103 dislikes, meaning only 33% impressions were positive.