Ubisoft’s elusive Skull & Bones not dead but not ready for primetime either

Ubisoft has released a statement in regard to their online pirate sim Skull & Bones. According to the game’s Creative Director, development on the title is still ongoing but the game will not be featured in today’s Ubisoft Forward event.

One particular tidbit that might slip the attention of readers in the post however points towards the game having gone through some sort of reboot during development. Elisabeth Pellen, the Creative Director of Skull & Bones, briefly mentions that the production of the project is in ‘full swing with a new vision‘.

As Skull & Bones evolved from its original idea to what it is now, it was also necessary to have some fresh eyes join the team. I was one of those people when I joined as Skull & Bones’ creative director a little over two years ago. I have been part of the game’s core team that leads many of the talented developers at Ubisoft Singapore. Since then, many new talents have joined our global crew.

This could very well be an admission that the original vision of Skull & Bones that was shown way back in 2017 has undergone massive new redesigns. That hypothesis would also fall in line with the game’s long development time.

It’s fairly uncommon for big publishers to reveal a game and let it sit on the working bench for this long. Unless reboots and restarts of the project happen. To be honest, things like that happen all the time in the gaming industry, so it shouldn’t be taken as a sign that the final product is going to be bad or anything.

It’s just that games that have been announced to the public beforehand occasionally experience reboots. Still, in an age where Sea of Thieves has shown that the online piracy thirst is well and alive, it’d be arguably better for the devs to take cues from the competition and create the best possible version of Skull & Bones.