There's nothing more sad than a failed shot at glory that just doesn't die. Failure is it's own hit, sharp and lingering, but it grows on you. Grows with you. In time, a failure can be the bedrock of success. I mean... it's never really been that way for me but- that's what people say, right? But when you dangle it on the end of your nose and wave it about pretending it's the prime belladonna of the party- then you have people around you staring and asking the tough questions. Such as- is the Singaporean government making you do this? You'd think they have enough on their plate with everything going on over there, but apparently even with a total upheaval of government steaming Ubisoft's hams is just too good to forget about. I get it. If I had them on a leash like that I'd definitely make them dance.
Of course I speak of 'Skull and Bones' Ubisoft's answer to... the very idea of competency, I guess. Entering a Pirate game landscape holding burnished goods that vaguely resembled the fantasy people flock to these myths for, only to be outdone by the untimely release of it's vastly superior competitor... Six years beforehand. Seriously, what kind of chunk out of the market did Ubisoft really expect to bite? A Live Service (Oh those are always winners!) ship only (because Pirates are just anthro-ships when you break it down) grind driven (delicate gameplay systems cobbled together by half-addled rhinos) MMO-lite. Or you could just get Sea of Thieves, the swashbuckling pirate sandbox game- now on Playstation too. I wonder how much attention these games rake in on Twitch... right now Sea of Thieves is looking at a just shy of 4,000 viewers and Skull and Bones has... 13. Huh. Yeah, I don't think this made the splash they thought it would.
Skull and Bones was already a poor proposition off the bat, but Ubisoft went out of their way to ensure the game would do the absolute worst by limiting it's reach on the platform that was probably the most interested- PC. How? Why, by selling it exclusively on a platform that wasn't the single biggest PC retailer on the market. Now, Ubisoft have held their games hostage on Uplay long enough that they do actually have a sizeable audience of PC players that are trained like beaten dogs to limp to their servers come new game release- but that audience was never going to be strong enough to compete with Steam- hence why they've been slowly releasing their older and newer games on the real platform, and hence why the very same is happening with Skull and Bones.
That's right- the realm of the dreaded 'User review' is going to be getting their hands on Skull and Bones and this could turn into the greatest moment of exposure for a game that literally no one cares about- it could be the very moment it achieves that tiny core audience who lack enough respect for themselves to leech onto the game- or it could be a moment of PR disaster where all the world is alerted to just how dismissive Skull and Bones is. Now we know the power of user reviews on publishers, you can bet that an unsatisfied public are going to get vocal- but that's just the gamble that Ubisoft need to make if they're going to squeeze one last bit of profit out of this game before it slithers off the timeline like a particularly Vitamin C-starved serpent. (That last simile was rough even for me.)
And here's the thing- we know where all of this is going to end. Skull and Bones was never the kind of property with legs under it. The very idea of a pirate themed MMO only ever appealed to a small subset of players who, for some reason, trusted Ubisoft to see it to fruition. Others went 'sure, but what are you going to do differently', and Ubisoft never could answer that. Different map? Assassin's Creed Rogue already did that. Different gameplay? Ubisoft spent the next half-dozen games slowly worsening ship combat in pursuit of exactly that. It was only when we got our hands on the game that it became clear- all Skull and Bones offered over Assassin's Creed Black Flag was a worse grind. Which is... I mean it sure fits the MMO spirit to be sure- but I'm not sure that was what people expected when it came to 'enriching' the experience.
So Skull and Bones is going to be pulled before it's time. We've seen it happen countless times with this age of the Live Service- and even though I think Skull and Bones might have secured a few more sales than it rightly deserved- it still landed with an minuscule blip of a splash. Hardly anyone covers the game, the official reddit is dead most times of the day (8 members online on a Friday afternoon? Seriously?) and the most discourse you see on the game in the public space is people wandering exactly what I am- why is this game still alive? Although to be fair, I guess game preservationists would laud the effort to keep the servers running given that premature game delisting is something they so vehemently abhor.
Until then the game is actually going through at least one full support cycle, with updates and events and the whole nine yards- which is kinda funny when you think about it. Modern RPG Assassin's Creed games are treated like Live Services with similar incessant support structures, but the tailor-made Live Service gets less engagement with the exact same level of interaction- it makes one wonder why they even bother. To which I have no answers, merely speculation, that ol' daddy Singapore is waiting still with a baseball bat outside their offices making sure this deal is seen through to completion. Tell me I'm wrong, Ubisoft- Tell me I'm wrong.
Just kill it
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