CD Projekt Red Jokes About Ubisoft's Skull and Bones

Game ZXC

CD Projekt Red

By John Bonelli

Published Apr 8, 2024

Highlights

CD Projekt Red playfully mocks Ubisoft's "AAAA" game labeling with its own "AAAAA" joke during an investor call.
Despite Cyberpunk 2077's rocky launch, CD Projekt Red continued to support the game with updates and DLC.
CD Projekt Red has multiple projects in the works, including sequels to The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077, and a new IP.

A developer at the Cyberpunk 2077 studio, CD Projekt Red, has playfully mocked Ubisoft's use of the term "Quadruple-A" to describe its latest release, Skull and Bones. Inspired by the exceptional naval combat that debuted in Assassin's Creed 4: Blag Flag, Ubisoft's Skull and Bones attempts to refine that system in a shared-world live service experience. Despite Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot boasting Skull and Bones as a "AAAA" game, its February launch left a lot to be desired, so much so that its release gave Assassin's Creed 4 an unexpected spike in player count.

CD Projekt Red is certainly no stranger to an underwhelming game launch, to put it lightly. The 2020 release of Cyberpunk 2077 was disastrous, as the futuristic open world sci-fi RPG was drowning in bugs and technical issues abound. The backlash was so extreme that PlayStation removed the game from its digital storefront. As bad as the sentiment surrounding CD Projekt Red was, the studio didn't give up on Cyberpunk 2077 and continued to release updates and bug fixes in the years following. With the game finally running as intended, CD Projekt Red released Cyberpunk 2077's Phamtom Liberty DLC last year to raving reception, solidifying the game as a must-play RPG and redeeming CD Projekt Red as one of the industry's premier RPG studios.

Skull and Bones Already Getting Price Cuts

The cost of Ubisoft's $70 seafaring naval combat game, Skull and Bones, is temporarily reduced only weeks after its initial launch.

In a recent CD Projekt Red investor call Q&A, one developer poked a bit of fun when asked about Ubisoft and its freshly released Skull and Bones. The investor brought up Ubisoft and its use of "AAAA" to describe its new games, asking "Will you therefore dare to reassess whether CD Projekt will continue to produce 'only' AAA?", to which the CD developer jokingly responded "Ours will be AAAAA". Many feel this newfound use of "AAAA" to describe AAA games may set a dangerous precedent in terms of setting incorrect expectations for games that already have exorbitant budgets and difficult time constraints.

What Is CD Projekt Red Working On?

The rest of the investor call made mention of some of the other games CD Projekt Red currently has in production now that Cyberpunk 2077 has wrapped up with Phantom Liberty. The company currently has three Witcher games in the pipeline: Project Solaris, which is believed to be The Witcher 4, a multiplayer Witcher spinoff known as Project Sirius, and a remake of the original 2007 Witcher game. CD Projekt also has the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, Project Orion, currently in the concept phase. On top of all this, the studio additionally has a new IP in the concept stages as well, which is being referred to as Project Hadar.

It'll be interesting to see whether Ubisoft continues to describe its upcoming games as AAAA. Its highly anticipated open world Star Wars Outlaws game is supposedly aiming to release sometime later this year. The next big Assassin's Creed title, codenamed Red, may also be looking for a 2024 launch.

Skull and Bones

Skull and Bones is an action-adventure title developed by Ubisoft with a heavy focus on piracy and naval combat. Set in an open-world environment inspired by locations in the Indian Ocean, players take control of a customizable pirate captain and ship and undertake missions to collect treasure and raise in rank. Players rely on ship combat with cannons, mortars, and rockets to defeat both NPCs and other player ships.