Ubisoft's Skull and Bones Development Has Been An Anthem Level Nightmare According To Former Devs

[killamch89]

Why does this sound so much like Anthem's development issues? And the game has been in development for 8 YEARS?! I can't see a happy ending to this one either. What are your thoughts about Skull and Bones Development. This has been a month of nightmarish PR for Ubisoft.

 

[skyfire]

I think the effort put into skull and bones must not be as expensive as the anthem though. Anthem was kind of financial disaster. 

[Empire]

To think that during this whole time whole skull and bones remained directionless, Rare got Sea of Thieves out, have supported the game for a couple good years now and even got a crossover with PotC.

[Crazycrab]

I was VERY exited about this game when it was first announced.  The whole ship battles and mechanics from Assassin's Creed Black Flag expanded into it's own game with multiplayer and I heard at one point there would be a campaign and PVE as well.  It sounded like a dream game... but now it seems to be a nightmare.

 

If Ubisoft do release this it will likely be just slapped together to make up at least some of the development costs, and that's really sad.  I feel sorry for the devs because this still has a lot of potential that might be forever lost.

[Crazycrab]

5 hours ago, skyfire said:

I think the effort put into skull and bones must not be as expensive as the anthem though. Anthem was kind of financial disaster. 

 

Did you watch the video? Anthem has been estimated (not confirmed) to have had a budget of around $100 million.  Ubisoft have already spent $120 million on Skull and Bones and it's still at bare minimum 3 years away from release.  They've changed directors, fundamental concepts, re-started and re-tooled multiple times.  It is a financial hell hole that Ubisoft stand little to no chance of making any money on.

[killamch89]

9 hours ago, Crazycrab said:

I was VERY exited about this game when it was first announced.  The whole ship battles and mechanics from Assassin's Creed Black Flag expanded into it's own game with multiplayer and I heard at one point there would be a campaign and PVE as well.  It sounded like a dream game... but now it seems to be a nightmare.

 

If Ubisoft do release this it will likely be just slapped together to make up at least some of the development costs, and that's really sad.  I feel sorry for the devs because this still has a lot of potential that might be forever lost.

I was filled with excitement when they first announced it in 2013 and it wasn't until I heard the name and read some of the articles the other day that I realized that this game still existed. I swore it was one of those that got quietly offed never to see the light of day and it may very well suffer that fate by the looks of things.

[Heatman]

On 7/23/2021 at 7:23 AM, skyfire said:

I think the effort put into skull and bones must not be as expensive as the anthem though. Anthem was kind of financial disaster. 

Personally, I don't really think that they invested enough effort in skull and bones to make it a big success for reasons best known to them. 

[Reality vs Adventure]

We got a date to release on Nov. 8 2022. 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/7/23197741/skull-and-bones-ubisoft-forward-trailer-release-date

I'm real curious to see how this game turns out. Looks like it will be on all platforms except ps4. 

[Shagger]

21 minutes ago, Reality vs Adventure said:

We got a date to release on Nov. 8 2022. 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/7/23197741/skull-and-bones-ubisoft-forward-trailer-release-date

I'm real curious to see how this game turns out. Looks like it will be on all platforms except ps4. 

 

I've decided to embed the trailer directly because the verge are ass-holes who make it impossible to disable trackers on thier website.

 

 

I'll also add here an alternate article from Gamespot again because fuck The Verge and fuck Vox Media.

[Crazycrab]

I thought I'd share the full presentation from earlier today:

 

 

It's looks fine here, but given the troubled development and this game being be basically ripped up and rebuilt several times I have my doubts to say the least.

[Clasher]

It's quite a shockers to me that j haven't really heard anything about skull and bones up until this very moment.

From what I have seen here no one can really decipher Ubisoft reasons for spending that  kind of money on a video game and it still hasn't been released in eight years.

It's only natural we wait and see what this game would turn out to be, from now on  I will be keeping a close watch on this. 

[Crazycrab]

2 hours ago, Clasher said:

It's quite a shockers to me that j haven't really heard anything about skull and bones up until this very moment.

From what I have seen here no one can really decipher Ubisoft reasons for spending that  kind of money on a video game and it still hasn't been released in eight years.

It's only natural we wait and see what this game would turn out to be, from now on  I will be keeping a close watch on this. 

 

I'll give you the basic run down.  After the success of Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag in 2012 , Ubisoft made a decision that seemed to be a great idea at the time which was to flesh this aspect out into it's own full release.  Naturally to execute this the contracted the studio responsible for the naval combat sections in both Assassin's Creed III and IV, Ubisoft Singapore.

 

Although the studio had been around for a few years developing remakes and parts of other original AAA Ubisoft titles, they had no experience of being the lead developer on new game.  Despite this there be was initially a lot excitement for this project.

 

You can check out the videos and associated articles for more details but long story short the project was mismanaged.  It's gone through different directors, different concepts, multiplayer, single player, RPG, Live service and so on.  It has been delayed, ripped up and rebuilt multiple times and in my opinion on the only reason it wasn't cancelled outright was because to much time and money had already been invested in it.

 

This could have been something special.  Technically it could still be and we'll have to wait for the final release to pass judgement but we have seen in the past when development is a misery, the end result isn't good either.

[Clasher]

8 hours ago, Crazycrab said:

 

I'll give you the basic run down.  After the success of Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag in 2012 , Ubisoft made a decision that seemed to be a great idea at the time which was to flesh this aspect out into it's own full release.  Naturally to execute this the contracted the studio responsible for the naval combat sections in both Assassin's Creed III and IV, Ubisoft Singapore.

 

Although the studio had been around for a few years developing remakes and parts of other original AAA Ubisoft titles, they had no experience of being the lead developer on new game.  Despite this there be was initially a lot excitement for this project.

 

You can check out the videos and associated articles for more details but long story short the project was mismanaged.  It's gone through different directors, different concepts, multiplayer, single player, RPG, Live service and so on.  It has been delayed, ripped up and rebuilt multiple times and in my opinion on the only reason it wasn't cancelled outright was because to much time and money had already been invested in it.

 

This could have been something special.  Technically it could still be and we'll have to wait for the final release to pass judgement but we have seen in the past when development is a misery, the end result isn't good either.

Now I get the full scope of everything.

I feel the indecisiveness of Ubisoft on what the game should turn to be is what has led to all this, if they had just stick to a plan instead of going on a rollercoaster ride trying out different patterns and styles the game would have been out already.

Well as you said we only have to wait and see what it eventually turns out to be.

[Kane99]

Yeah, figured this would look almost like AC Pirates. Makes sense with them wanting to make a pirates game after AC: Black Flag. Which I loved, and honestly thought it was better than AC 3. Anyway, that's not the point. I don't know how to feel about this game. I feel I got played out on the naval battle stuff during Black Flag and the game that followed. I just can't see myself playing this honestly. 

But, maybe I'll check it out once it goes on sale after it releases. 

[killamch89]

15 hours ago, Crazycrab said:

I thought I'd share the full presentation from earlier today:

 

 

It's looks fine here, but given the troubled development and this game being be basically ripped up and rebuilt several times I have my doubts to say the least.

My sentiments exactly and with how Ubisoft has been in recent times, things are definitely not looking good right now. I'm going to say that I have zero expectations of this game doing any better than that Live service game Ubisoft released recently that died a swift death.