Ubisoft had to dig deep to find a metric to praise Skull and Bones for

When in doubt, there is always “player engagement”

Ubisoft’s self-proclaimed “quadruple-A” pirate game Skull and Bones received a rather lukewarm welcome by the gaming community after it finally managed to leave port earlier this month. The live-service game entered its first season, titled Raging Tides, just yesterday and its publisher desperately wanted to say something good about it on that occasion.

That’s completely understandable, given that so many games had great sales numbers to report shortly after launch this year. Think of the success stories of Palworld, Helldivers 2, Persona 3 Reload, or Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth – it’d be strange if the world’s first “quadruple-A game” released its first season and didn’t have something similar to boast about at the same time.

It's not exactly smooth sailing for Skull and Bones / Ubisoft

Well, Ubisoft apparently didn’t find any satisfying sales numbers or a record of concurrent users to share. Instead, the company praised Skull and Bones for achieving “record player engagement, with four hours average daily playtime.” This, the company added, is “the second highest ever at Ubisoft.” That’s one whole hour per A.

It’s already kind of funny that it had to use the dreaded player engagement metric for this, which no one in the public really cares about, but its “quadruple-A game” only landing on second place in a competition of its own choosing, selected specifically to make the game look good, is the comical cherry on top.

Now, it’s not like Ubisoft doesn’t have experience in turning around struggling live-service games. Rainbow Six: Siege is stronger that ever going into Year 9 and For Honor is still online thanks to a very dedicated fan base. If Skull and Bones can repeat this story (and a dedicated player base that is willing to put four hours a day into it, as much as I mock the metric, is surely a good start to that), Ubisoft will probably be happy in the long term. But Skull and Bones already took a long time and a lot of investment to make – so can Ubisoft afford that patience?

Still, with how much it hyped the title up to be something revolutionary, this sure feels a little disappointing – and like cherry-picking stats to cover up underwhelming sales numbers.

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