Ubisoft's multiplayer pirate action game Skull & Bones was unveiled in 2017. The release was scheduled for the following year, but the project never saw the light of day.
Delays and development reboots. Journalists found out what lies behind this.
- Development has been underway since 2013. Thus, in one form or another, the project has been “in the works” for 8 years now.
- It was planned to be an expansion for Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag. That installment focused on a “pirate” theme.
- The expansion evolved into an MMO spin-off called “Black Flag Infinite”, and then into Skull & Bones. Recently, Ubisoft announced the “platform game” AC Infinite.
- A conflict among multiple managers, each wanting to take power into their own hands.
- A lack of vision for the final product within the team. The action was set in the Caribbean, and then moved to the Indian Ocean. One version drew inspiration from “Sid Meier’s Pirates!” and took place in the fantastical world of Hyperborea. It featured branching multiplayer week-long campaigns. Libertalia was also considered — a pirate island colony, with everything “revolving” around a floating base.
- A constant drain of personnel. Developers are not moving to another project, but leaving Ubisoft altogether; they are being actively poached by other companies. Experienced staff are leaving, and the team is constantly being replenished with “green” specialists.
- According to three sources, the project has already cost Ubisoft more than 120 million dollars, and that figure continues to grow.
- “Nobody wants to admit that they screwed up”, “If Skull & Bones were at a competitor, it would have been killed 10 times already”, developers say.
- Nobody believes the game will see the light of day in 2022.
Simply canceling the project is impossible. Sources mentioned a deal with the government of Singapore, according to which it was required to hire a certain number of people and release a project based on a new original intellectual property in the next few years. In exchange, Ubisoft will receive generous subsidies.
Skull & Bones is in development hell and continues to consume money and effort for 8 years now. A unified concept is missing; by 2020, the vision of the final product had changed again. And even now, they haven't completely decided what kind of game it will be.
“When you are free, there is no failure”, Guillemot said. “There is only moving forward”. Time will tell if that will be true for Skull & Bones.