Ubisoft has said the recently released Skull and Bones has achieved “record player engagement” since launch, although it has yet to announce how many copies it’s sold or how many players it has.
You wouldn’t know the players, they go to a different school.
The different school in 8 months after Skull and Bones launch:
Our curriculum isn’t doing well. This is not the curriculum we wanted to deliver. Players expect better, yada yada yada, you know the usual school’s apology stuff. We need to lay off 100% of teachers so as to realign, synergize, refocus, retool, and remoney our money-making money curriculum disguised as a “game”. We will do better. We hear you loud and clear (kind of), and we probably learned a lesson of some kind.
User accidentally opens Uplay when trying to double-click Steam
A store banner ad shows ‘Skull and Bones’
User immediately frowns in disgust and tries to spam the X button to quit Uplay
Uplay privacy-invading telemetry captures an image of the user frowning via the webcam, and tracks the movement of the mouse cursor moving across the banner ad of ‘Skull and Bones’
Uplay closes, telemetry is uploaded to Ubisoft’s servers
Ubisoft:
As a hobbyist game developer, my game also has record player engagement.
My wife played it for about 15 mins.
Sounds like success to me. Any engagement is better than none
There aren’t many AAAA gamers out there I suppose
Ubisoft in 2031:
We’re pushing AAAA gaming forward, to grow our fledgling AAAA Gamer-base! We are excited to introduce AAAA-as-a-Service. We think you’re gonna love our AAAAaS.
Stay tuned in 2032, when we launch our connected AAAA-as-a-Service-Subscription! Now you’ll be able to get ground-breaking AAAAaSS gaming at an affordable value. Paid subscribers will get even more checklists, even more overwhelming map icons, and an even larger empty world with no payoff to explore to complete in our games! Do you love going here and pressing the A button? What if you could complete those map markers while not only pressing the A button to end the mission, but instead, having to swipe your credit card while timing the press of the A button? We feel this rewarding challenge will introduce a sense of pride and accomplishment in gamers, and introduce more money in our coffers.
Gamers:
Dude, just create new innovative games with new IPs that aren’t monetized to hell! We’ll buy those! We miss the old Splinter Cell days.
Uibsoft:
MoNeTiZaTiOn, you say??!! Splinter Cell as a Service, you say?! We hear you loud and clear!
Collect 3,000 cells in this wide open world to collect your skins.
Buy 4,000 cells to get this custom pirate skin for your character.
Of all the self labeled AAAA games, this is easily the best, no contest.
No contest on account of there only being one.
Didn’t the latest shitty Call of Duty try basically this exact tactic? They cited some sort of record high in player engagement with the campaign, because if you torture statistics hard enough you can make them say anything.
Same with Starfield. Biggest launch ever!! Well yeah no shit Sherlock it was free on gamepass for like 30 million people lol
Typical corpo horseshit. The game is a failure. If it wasn’t, that would be the news.
I’m assuming the vagueness of the phrase “record player engagement” means it has a lot more to do with engagement with whatever microtransaction they have going than engagement with the game itself.
The game had an 8-hour free trial. That would drive the “engagement” they’re talking about, and I’m guessing it’s the only positive news they have. If the game was selling well or had significant daily active users, they’d be talking about that instead.
Record High! For Ubisoft! On a Thursday! Between the hours of 11am and 12pm! Sparkling white wine for everyone!
AI players are still players…
I guess people booing in record numbers would be a form of engagement
Note they just say record, not record high…
12 people is a record!
I didn’t even know it released.
I engage with my record player everyday. It plays wonderful music.
“I mean, the three people still playing it are reeeealy playing it, you know? They engaged in our game like no other! Record player engagement everybody!”
