As we’re at Develop in Brighton this week, I’ll keep this edition short and sweet (two things I am not, as a grumpy, 6’3 Welsh lad). But we couldn’t leave you hanging, could we?
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced has been a much-needed win for Ubisoft on Steam, selling 701K copies for $35M in gross revenue, plus almost $1M more from day-one DLC. Most of that crowd showed up early, with peak DAUs of 416K on day two.
Black Flag Resynced out-earned Shadows on Steam, at a lower price
Shadows was the first Assassin’s Creed to go day-and-date on Steam, and it set the revenue bar early last year. Resynced cleared it comfortably, and did so while selling for less ($59.99 versus Shadows’ full-RPG price).
On day one alone, Resynced pulled in $22.4M on Steam, 2.35x what Shadows managed on its own launch day ($9.5M). Four days in, Resynced’s revenues via unit sales sat at $35.1M cumulative versus Shadows’ $22.2M, roughly 1.58x ahead and pulling away.
Against the pre-day-and-date era, it’s no contest: Resynced has out-earned Valhalla by 9x and Mirage by nearly 19x at the same point, a reminder of how much Steam has grown as a launch platform for Ubisoft in just a few years.
It’s proof that day-and-date Steam releases are now doing serious money for a publisher that spent years treating PC as an afterthought (outside of an ill-fated launcher).
Resynced’s top two Steam markets by players are the US (30%) and China (15%), the new-market reach Ubisoft has been desperate to build. Steam, not the consoles, is where growth is coming from for publishers nowadays.
But the crew is divided – in terms of Steam user reviews, anyway
Resynced is among the best-reviewed Assassin’s Creed games ever, but players are – as is sometimes the case – a tougher crowd. The launch shipped with problems, including dialogue-freezing bugs, busted language-pack downloads, and an intrusive in-game store that defaults the pause menu to DLC. The user reviews reflect it.
We dug into our review sentiment data in our platform and found that the “mixed” score is mostly one market:
Weighted across languages, positive sentiment sits around 73%.
When we remove Simplified Chinese, positive sentiment jumps to roughly 80%. Simplified Chinese reviews are 20.8% of the total but just 45% positive, single-handedly dragging the headline number down.
Chinese reviewers are overwhelmingly protesting one thing, streamers getting early access ahead of paying pre-order customers, which a significant chunk of Chinese user reviewers framed as a “caste system.”
It’s a similar pattern to one we flagged with Slay the Spire 2, with forums and Discord largely blocked in China, Steam reviews become the main channel for players to protest a grievance.
This kind of platform politics in China means Western developers cannot treat review scores as a pure measure of game quality – it’s often a measure of community management.
The monetisation outrage vs the wallets
The loudest complaint online is the day-one DLC, with players reporting $85-plus of packs, with an in-game store nagging throughout.
The top DLC by units was the $4.99 Map Pack, at a 6.34% attach rate. Every $9.99 pack landed under 2.65%, most under 2%. So the market spoke clearly: a higher share of players will happily grab a cheap $5 convenience item, and overwhelmingly ignore the pricey cosmetic bundles the store keeps shoving at them.
The outrage is real, but it’s outrage at the principle, the aggressive store, the idea of $85 of day-one DLC, far more than at anything people are actually paying for.
For all the noise, the DLC moved less than 3% of the money. The base game did the work. But of course, $1M in extra revenue on Steam is nothing to sniff at.
The takeaway
Ubisoft needed a win, and on the numbers it got a real one: a record Steam launch, out-earning a full-price flagship at a lower price, with exactly the US-and-China reach the publisher has been chasing.
The remake-as-stabiliser strategy we flagged pre-launch is working. The asterisks, a rough technical launch, an over-eager store, and a pissed-off Chinese player base, are definitely worth keeping tabs on, though.
Still, many players grumbled loudly, then bought the game in record numbers (but mostly skipped the DLC, at launch anyway). Full launch console data is coming soon as copies continue to sell through. Hit subscribe below to get that in your inbox when it’s ready!
Cool links and other stuff
It was a chunky press week for Alinea last week, including coverage from our mates at GamesIndustry.biz, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, and GameSpot.
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