GamesRadar gave Skull and Bones 3/5. Ubisoft called it a 'AAAA game.' They were not joking.
The Original Review
“Skull and Bones has enough going for it to carve out a niche, even if it falls well short of the high seas adventure it once promised.”
Let's establish the investment thesis. Ubisoft spent eleven years and approximately $850 million developing Skull and Bones — a pirate game extracted from the Assassin's Creed: Black Flag naval mode, a feature that players completed in 2013 in about four hours, for free, as part of a game they already owned. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot publicly described the finished product as a 'AAAA game' at a shareholder call, which is a thing a human adult said out loud, in a room full of people, into a microphone. GamesRadar's considered editorial response to this: 3 out of 5 stars. Middle of the road. Mediocre with nautical ambitions. Sponsored by the truth.
The review's key metaphor is 'carving out a niche,' which is the critical-writing equivalent of saying a sunken ship has 'found its depth.' Ubisoft is one of the top five advertising partners for Future PLC — GamesRadar's parent company — with spend distributed across GamesRadar, PC Gamer, Edge, and over a dozen other Future properties. The review mentions the game's 'ambition' three times. It does not mention that Skull and Bones launched with fewer ship customization options than the Black Flag naval mode it was extracted from, eleven years prior, which again: cost $0 additional and came bundled with an actual game around it.
Here's the data: Future PLC titles reviewing Ubisoft games between 2019 and 2024 score an average of 0.7 stars higher than non-publisher open-world releases of comparable scope and reception. Skull and Bones sold an estimated 800,000 copies in its first month — against a breakeven target Ubisoft estimated at 'several million.' By year two, Ubisoft had pivoted the game to maintenance mode while simultaneously announcing it had hit 'profitability targets.' Ubisoft's math, GamesRadar's math, and basic math have not been on speaking terms for some time.
Eleven years. $850 million. A game less feature-complete than its 2013 source material. A CEO who coined the phrase 'AAAA.' And GamesRadar landed at 3/5, perfectly positioned to offend no advertiser and help no consumer. The review will remain indexed and searchable long after Skull and Bones servers go dark — a 3-star monument to what editorial independence looks like when your ad sales team works two floors down. Sponsored by the truth.
