Highlights

  • Skull and Bones players have been averaging 4 hours of daily playtime since launch.
  • Ubisoft says this makes the live-service game one of its most engaging titles to date.
  • The lack of any other official metrics like player numbers or total playing hours suggests Skull and Bones hasn't hit the ground running, sales-wise.

Ubisoft said that Skull and Bones is one of its most engaging titles to date. The company substantiated that claim by sharing the game's "record" daily playtime metric as part of the Skull and Bones Season 1 launch announcement.

Originally meant to build on the success of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Ubisoft's pirate game ostensibly had a difficult task of maintaining player interest over the course of its development. That's largely because it spent 11 years in the making, having been delayed seven times. Skull and Bones was finally released for PC and current-generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles on February 16.

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Skull and Bones Players Averaging 4 Hours of Daily Playtime

Skull and Bones Season 1, called Raging Tides, kicked off 11 days later. Ubisoft's announcement of the inaugural season saw the publisher reveal that the game's player base has been averaging four hours of daily playtime since launch. Going by that "record player engagement" metric, Skull and Bones is the company's second most successful game to date. As always, what the publisher isn't saying about its early performance is just as telling as the rest, if not more so; since the company didn't share any specific sales data, it is plausible that it doesn't view Skull and Bones sales figures as anything worth boasting about.

A late February report from Insider Gaming claimed that Skull and Bones had amassed approximately 850,000 lifetime players a week following its release. While that estimate is far from abysmal for a title that many gamers have long viewed as vaporware due to its numerous delays, it is also unlikely to be an accurate reflection of its sales. Namely, the reported figure has presumably been inflated by the fact that Ubisoft has been offering an 8-hour free trial of Skull and Bones from day one.

Since Ubisoft hasn't said otherwise, it's to be assumed that the 4-hour daily playtime average includes both trial players and paying customers. The figure itself does suggest that those who have been playing the game have also been enjoying it, prompting Ubisoft to disclose it in the first place. Whether the company continues sharing updates on this metric in the weeks ahead will likely be an indicator of whether Skull and Bones managed to maintain player interest throughout Season 1.

While Skull and Bones has so far failed to establish itself as a huge hit, its launch month still turned out better than that of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which is currently averaging fewer than 1,000 daily players and has already been labeled a disappointment by Warner Bros. That notwithstanding, the relatively lackluster receptions of both titles have recently renewed calls for $70 live-service games to meet their maker.