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00:00In the first year of Skull & Bones, risk everything you have to your name and face off against merciless pirate lords.
00:09Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we're looking at the state of Skull & Bones roughly a year after launch.
00:16Ready your cannons, plunge into naval mayhem, and defend your empire on the seas of Skull & Bones.
00:26Before we begin, we publish new content all week long, so be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
00:35The story of Skull & Bones began long before its release in February of 2024, way back in 2013 when Ubisoft revolutionized naval video games with Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag.
00:47Black Flag remains beloved, many people's favorite Assassin's Creed game, and arguably the best pirate game ever made.
00:55So Ubisoft decided that it would make a multiplayer version of Black Flag, where you could sail the high seas with your friends, embarking upon a pirate's life.
01:13It was revealed with a bombastic cinematic trailer at E3 2017, and people understandably assumed that the release was imminent.
01:21After all, it had already been in development for four years by this point, and since it was just an online version of Black Flag, how much longer could we have to wait?
01:40Well, a lot longer, it turns out.
01:43Skull & Bones, for a while, was the industry's second most notorious piece of vaporware, after Beyond Good & Evil 2.
01:50Another Ubisoft joint that, as of 2025, doesn't look like it will ever appear.
01:55The story got more and more tumultuous behind the scenes, with the direction constantly shifting.
02:01Skull & Bones is a gritty and immersive pirate action RPG experience, offering a rags-to-riches fantasy and a vast open world that can be experienced in solo and in co-op.
02:13It began life in the Caribbean, meaning it would be able to reuse the map of Black Flag before moving to the fantastical realm of Hyboria,
02:21which is a mytholized version of the North Pole the ancient Greeks came up with, since they'd never been able to sail so far north.
02:28It was then brought back down to Earth properly, and ended up finally releasing in the Indian Ocean,
02:34covering everything from a fictionalized version of the East African coast, to an equally fictional Indonesia, and even regions reminiscent of India itself.
02:43Plagued with delay after delay, Skull & Bones finally emerged on February 16th, 2024, for a full $70 price tag.
02:59And of course, it was full of microtransactions for cosmetics to make your ship and pirate captain look as silly as possible.
03:06But before it came out, it shed a true story mode and also had almost no PvP, putting people off even more.
03:13When you finally played the game, you were treated to a glorified crafting simulator.
03:18Most of what you did as you ground out those first 10 infamy levels was pillaging supplies to build bigger, better ships
03:25that would enable you to sink even more powerful ships to get better supplies to build more ships, and so on.
03:37There's nothing wrong with a good crafting loop, but the first 12 hours of Skull & Bones are just a crafting loop with little else.
03:47There was a flimsy story via the quest givers at the two pirate dens, but it wasn't remotely interesting or memorable.
03:54The naval combat was just as addictive as you'd expect from a game based on Black Flag, but Black Flag also had plenty of land-based activities, fun characters, and a great story.
04:05After reaching the highest rank of infamy, you unlocked a complete foundry and smuggling system to get more money to buy more cosmetics,
04:13which does add depth, but much of the high-level events aren't well-balanced for just one person.
04:19Unless you have a whole fleet of friends to fight with, you might find yourself locked into boring battles that take way too long, that's if they don't crash halfway through.
04:35Following this lackluster launch, in which it was hard for anybody to argue that Skull & Bones was worth anywhere close to $70 or was a quadruple-A game,
04:45as Ubisoft insisted, Skull & Bones faded from public view.
04:49Its numerous seasons that added new villains, items, events, and gameplay systems, not to mention sea monster bosses, came and went without much fanfare.
04:58And we're now deep into Season 4, the final season announced with the Year 1 roadmap at launch.
05:04It is at hand. The Indian Ocean stands on the verge of chaos as the great shadow Vikram Rajan and his flesh-eating beasts descend upon its waters.
05:16Though it's easy enough for us armchair game developers to say that Ubisoft should have released Skull & Bones as a freemium title,
05:22since it's full of microtransactions and has a smuggler's pass anyway, they may have made even less money that way.
05:29Its development allegedly cost $200 million, and we know that it was a loss.
05:35Unless it was the actual greatest game of all time, it's doubtful it would have made that money back.
05:40Though, going by how people are more forgiving of Skull & Bones' minimalist content when it has free weekends,
05:46it may have been able to build an even bigger audience with a freemium model.
05:50It's true that it's often on sale for half price, or less, but even then, it's hard to justify spending the money
06:04since the game is going to try and go through your pockets a second time as soon as you boot it up.
06:09There are worse games out there than Skull & Bones, but the game's failure and middling release of Assassin's Creed Mirage a few months before
06:17were just a harbinger of dark days to come for Ubisoft.
06:32Ubisoft saw many more high-profile failures in 2024.
06:36There was X Defiant, which unlike Skull & Bones, has been shut down, so Skull & Bones must have some players.
06:43There was a new Prince of Persia side-scroller, which was a critical darling, but sold poorly,
06:48and of course, there was Star Wars Outlaws.
07:00It's difficult to understand the backlash to Star Wars Outlaws,
07:03but it seems like people are just tired of Ubisoft games being Ubisoft games and want something different.
07:09They're too used to that formulaic approach.
07:12All of these flops have led Ubisoft to both delay Assassin's Creed Shadows numerous times,
07:17something previously unheard of in the franchise, and to look for someone to buy them.
07:21Most rumors suggest that Tencent is chomping at the bit to get a piece of Ubisoft,
07:26and we wouldn't be surprised to see Ubisoft sell to the megaconglomerates, awful as that would be.
07:31The company has also weathered some other big scandals in the last few years,
07:43including a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal in 2020.
07:47This remains ongoing because most of the game developers named in the complaints haven't even left the company.
07:53They've just been shuffled around.
07:55It remains unclear whether Ubisoft has actually fixed its internal culture or not.
08:01More division among the people here. More corruption.
08:05But what's Skull & Bones like now in 2025?
08:08Well, it's still not been made freemium.
08:11This seems like a no-brainer, but it would be hugely insulting to all the people who did cough up the money to buy it,
08:17and Ubisoft would have to decide whether to issue refunds or not.
08:21Knowing what we know about AAA publishers, we doubt that it would.
08:25It's not like Blizzard offered any refunds when Overwatch 2 went free-to-play and replaced its predecessor.
08:36Unlike other disastrous launches in recent years, Skull & Bones hasn't really changed.
08:41There have been a lot of quality-of-life updates, including streamlining the map,
08:45making it easier to fast-travel to certain events, and redeveloping the UI in other ways.
08:50But it's not the kind of thing you'd notice if you put the game down for a year and picked it back up.
09:02It can still be a tedious slog to get through boss battles without friends,
09:06and a lonely life to sail the seas if you don't have anyone to join you.
09:10On the other hand, if you do have a group of friends willing to buy and play Skull & Bones, you might have a ton of fun.
09:17It's definitely a game where your mileage will vary depending on whether you're playing alone or not.
09:22But that's not great, since plenty of other live-service games like Destiny or Fallout 76 are still fun whether you have company or not.
09:38Ubisoft has added more ships and a deeper ship upgrade system,
09:42but still hasn't added one of the biggest features players are clamoring for, swordplay.
09:47Black Flag may be beloved for its naval gameplay, massively improved from the clunkier version of Assassin's Creed 3,
09:53but it had plenty of things to do on land, too.
09:56Edward has swords, pistols, his hidden blade, and he can climb around the ship's mast and leap from one ship to another or dive into the sea.
10:04You can land at forts and explore every single island you find,
10:08not to mention that there's a wealth of optional side content in the various cities.
10:13Twelve years on, and Skull & Bones remains the thing it was always destined to be, a pale imitation of Black Flag.
10:29Ubisoft confirmed back in 2024 that it has numerous Assassin's Creed remakes in the works,
10:34but we don't yet know which games these will be.
10:37The first two are obvious candidates that will easily make millions,
10:41but there have been suggestions that actually it'll be Black Flag, all so that Ubisoft can asset flip Skull & Bones.
10:48Now, this is totally unconfirmed, but if they ever do release a remake of Black Flag,
10:54it won't take Sleuth long to find out whether assets have been flipped or not.
10:58Considering Ubisoft has a long history of reusing assets across Assassin's Creed,
11:03we'd be more surprised if there weren't any repeats.
11:06And there have been two more nails in Skull & Bones' coffin,
11:18the release of Sea of Thieves on PS5 and the reveal of Like a Dragon, Pirate Yakuza.
11:23After six years of Sea of Thieves only being on Xbox and PC,
11:27Rare's Pirate MMO sailed onto PlayStation and became an even bigger success.
11:32Can Skull & Bones pull off the same feat, since Sea of Thieves wasn't all that well received at launch either?
11:38And will everybody forget it exists when Pirate Yakuza launches?
11:51Only time will tell whether Skull & Bones can rise from its own ashes,
11:55or if it's already sinking towards a watery grave.
12:02What do you think? Is Ubisoft doomed, or can they come back if Assassin's Creed Shadows and these promised remakes appear?
12:13Let us know, and let us know whether you're still playing Skull & Bones 2.
12:24Check out these other great clips from Mojo Plays,
12:27and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
12:32Thanks for watching.