Skull & Bones Is Struggling To Bring In Players

Skull and Bones, the live service pirate game that released just over two weeks ago on PS5, is already having its price slashed across the US and Europe. It was a full-price title at launch — your now-standard $69.99 / £69.99 — but it's currently down to as low as $44.99 / £49.85 (as reported by VGC). While that's certainly not what we'd call cheap, it's still a significant discount after such a short length of time on the market, and it suggests that retailers are struggling to shift copies.

So far, 2024 has been incredibly solid with its big AAA releases. Multiple companies like Atlus, SEGA, Capcom, and Square Enix have been dropping quality titles for gamers to enjoy. And then, there’s Ubisoft, who has been trying to spin the release of Skull and Bones into something positive. Their pirate-themed multiplayer adventure title has been in development limbo for years, and then when the beta finally released, it didn’t exactly spur people to try it out for full price. Ubisoft has been going overboard, pun intended, to sell it as a AAAA title, which many know by now to be nothing more than a puffery statement.

Ubisoft has said the recently released Skull and Bones has achieved “record player engagement” since launch, although it has yet to announce how many copies it’s sold or how many players it has.

Skull and Bones finally launched earlier this month, and though it has done quite the opposite of setting the world on fire with its critical reception, for those who’re sailing the high seas in the online pirate game, Ubisoft has released its first free season of post-launch content.

Skull & Bones hasn't gotten off to the greatest of starts, coming out of the gates to middling critical reviews and even worse user ratings. While it can be difficult to put too much stock in user reviews these days, the general feelings of dissatisfaction are also being felt in the game's player numbers, as a recent report has claimed that Skull & Bones has failed to crack the one million player mark, even though Ubisoft offered everyone an eight-hour free trial.

I had high expectations for Skull and Bones, anticipating a stellar “AAAA” pirate experience: peg legs, sliders—the whole nine yards. However, my hopes were quickly dashed as I emerged from a botched naval battle, coughing up sand on an unfamiliar island. Surveying my reflection in a broken barrel on the shoreline, I sifted through the limited presets available to customize my pirate avatar.

The next seafaring video game adventure pilots its craft into the wild blue yonder, but there are stormy skies ahead. Ubisoft’s infamously delayed has finally released, with its own unsteady abstractions on playable piracy, and much of it boils down to boats and boat accessories. It's often an admittedly unique multiplayer-oriented experience with some idiosyncratic combat, but frequently falters in terms of immersion, awash in fetch quest loops and routines which struggle to fulfill the pirate power fantasy.

While Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League falls short of WB Games’ expectations, Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones isn’t doing much better. Sources speaking to Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson report that it had around 850,000 players.

The rarest currency you can get in is Sovereigns, which only appear during the endgame portion of your adventure. Used to purchase new cosmetics for your character and ship, you need to compete with others to earn these items. However, you must reach a certain level of Infamy first before you can even consider collecting Sovereigns toward the end of your adventure.

In , a vast number of ships can be built to add to your armada, but the one that sends a shiver down your spine when you hear its name is the Pyromaniac Sambuk Ship. It is an excellent ship to hit enemies fast and hard; it is also quite challenging to get without knowing what you have to do to get it. Players must prioritize it if they want to use it as soon as possible.

Picture this. You’re about to go watch a movie or TV show that has been “hyped up” by those who made it, and you’re curious what it will turn out like. However, once you’re through parts of it, or most of it, depending on how patient you are, you realize the hard truth: this isn’t anything close to what has been promised. Or, just as bad, the promise of it “being like that show/movie you like” wasn’t true in the slightest. What do you do when that happens? Simple, you go back to what was good! Something Skull & Bones has unintentionally done for itself.

allows pirating players to have more than just a simple parrot as a pet aboard their pirate ships, with parrots not even being an option at launch. This naval combat game currently only has a couple of cat or lemur animal companion options, with most of those being limited to special events. Therefore, many players are hoping that the list of available in-game pets will expand quickly. Having a pet on board a pirate ship may not be a necessity in the game, but having this option available is a fantastic feature that needs to be expanded on.