Skull and Bones, Ubisoft’s pirate adventure game first announced at E3 2017, has been delayed yet again, this time *at least* to 2022.
Ubisoft buried the latest Skull and Bones delay in its yearly earnings report (opens in new tab) for 2020, where it’s now pegged for release between 2022 and 2023. In the same report, the publisher shared that it’s expecting to launch Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Quarantine (oof), Riders Republic, The Division: Heartland, and Roller Champions before the fiscal year ending March 2022.
Skull and Bones has been plagued with delays right from the get-go, with its first delay pushing it ahead to the before times of 2019. Last year, Ubisoft announced that it was moving forward with a “new vision” for Skull and Bones and spoke a bit about why it’s taking so long to finish.
“Many of you have been wondering why we’ve had to postpone our launch,” Ubisoft Singapore creative director Elisabeth Pellen said in a statement from September (opens in new tab). “The answer is that we simply needed more time. We dreamt something bigger for Skull and Bones, and these ambitions naturally came with bigger challenges.
“These difficulties resulted in necessary delays for our game. Critical questions needed to be addressed over the past several months such as: how do we modernize the classic pirate fantasy? How do we ensure a more immersive and visceral experience? How do we create cool and memorable moments in-game? For most of these questions to be answered, it was clear that we needed more development time.”
Ubisoft hasn’t confirmed what exactly its new direction for Skull and Bones entails, but a July 2020 report from VGC (opens in new tab) claims it’ll have “live storytelling” elements and Fortnite inspirations.
Hopefully, we’ll learn more soon, as Ubisoft has promised more details on Skull and Bones are coming this year.