Ubisoft: The numbers are out of mind, the pirate hit sold 2 million copies on the first day!

Steam records and the return of trust

Along with impressive sales, the game also dominated on other platforms on July 9, the day of its release. It broke the series record on Steam with a peak of over 100,000 simultaneous games and was the most viewed title on Twitch. The company’s management did not miss the success, and Martin Schelling, head of the Assassin’s Creed brand, expressed his satisfaction in the official announcement.

​- Black Flag has always had a special place in the community’s heart, but also in ours. Bringing him back in the Resynced version was a promise to that passion for Edward’s adventures. Seeing two million players launch on the first day, with great reviews from critics, is the biggest reward we could have hoped for – said Schelling.

Ubisoft’s long silence on sales

The decision to publish the exact number of copies sold represents a turn in Ubisoft’s communication strategy. For years, the company has presented data on the success of its games through nebulous metrics that are impossible to accurately compare. For example, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was only said to have had “the biggest launch week in the history of the series”, without specific numbers. Similarly, titles like Mirage and Shadows were listed as total “plays,” a metric that includes subscribers to the Ubisoft+ service, obscuring actual sales. According to available analysis, the last time Ubisoft published a čtype of sales figure for a game from the series was for the original Black Flag back in 2014.

Criticism notwithstandingč excellent grades

The success of the game is not only of a commercial nature. “Resynced” was met with praise by critics, as evidenced by high scores of 84 percent on Metacritic and 85 percent on OpenCritic, making it the highest-rated sequel since the original. However, the idyll was marred by the game’s criticism of aggressive microtransactions. The game, which is sold at full price, offers additional cosmetic items and progress “accelerators” worth almost 75 euros. Ubisoft has also come under fire for earlier statements that microtransactions make games “more fun”, a phrase that was noticeably quietly removed from their latest financial report.