Players who were waiting for Assassin’s Creed Shadows on its initial release date of November 12, 2024 will have to be patient, since we have just learned of the game’s abrupt postponement to early 2025. It is indeed on February 14, 2025 that it will be possible to find Yasuke and Naoe in what represents the most ambitious episode of the franchise. Officially, it is a question of refining the game in its smallest details, but for many, it is a fallback strategy to also face the backlash that the game has suffered for several months. It must be said that voices have been raised to make known their discontent with Ubisoft’s latest productions, as well as the fact that the Japanese community is demanding justice regarding the veracity of the facts proposed concerning the relevance of Yasuke as a master samurai, and that Ubisoft has been trying to defend tooth and nail since the beginning of its announcement.
Very unpopular on the networks and even in Japan, Assassin’s Creed Shadows must not disappoint Ubisoft financially, which finds itself in a critical situation. Analysts have mentioned so-called “slow” sales concerning Star Wars Outlaws and the poor reception of the game by players has caused Ubisoft’s stock to fall on the stock market, which has also reached its lowest rate since 2014. Some investors have come forward via an open letter to demand the privatization of Ubisoft and the departure of Yves Guillemot. In an increasingly accentuated turmoil, Ubisoft has therefore been forced to react in order not to further dramatize a very unenviable situation, and in a press release addressed to investors, the French publisher admits that sales of Star Wars Outlaws have not been there and that it cannot therefore afford a second disappointment for Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
- Assassin’s Creed Shadows will now launch on February 14, 2025. While the game is complete, lessons learned from the release of Star Wars Outlaws have led us to devote more time to polishing the title. This will allow the franchise’s most important entry to live up to its ambitions, including delivering on the promise of our dual-protagonist adventure, Naoe and Yasuke, bringing two very different playstyles.
To prove that big changes are underway within Ubisoft, we also learned of the abandonment of the classic Season Pass model, often pointed out by players annoyed that additional content is announced before the release of a game, and often at exorbitant prices. Ubisoft also promises to offer the first DLC for free to all people who pre-ordered Assassin’s Creed Shadows. This is also an opportunity for Ubisoft to launch the game on Steam day one, and no longer favor its Ubisoft Connect platform, also often pointed out by players.- But that’s not all, Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, also took the time to respond to criticism regarding the politicization of the content of his company’s games, accused by many people of giving in to the sirens of forced diversity, inclusion and equity, the famous wokeness that continues to rage in discussion topics. If Yves Guillemot refutes these postures of content politicization, affirming that Ubisoft simply creates entertainment products for the audience ” as wide as possible “, some actions and collaborations prove the opposite. But because of this, perhaps internally, things are changing.