Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced Sails to Two Million Sales and a Franchise Steam Record

Ubisoft announced on X that Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced sold two million copies on its launch day, a figure the publisher called a strong start. Ubisoft rarely shares sales numbers, so there is no clean comparison to earlier Assassin's Creed games, but the company made an exception here and said it expects the pace to hold as more players buy in.

"Dash my Buttons... Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has already passed 2 million copies sold! Whether you're sailing with us again, or stepping aboard the Jackdaw for the first time: THANK YOU from the bottom of ARR hearts."

— Assassin's Creed

The remake topped Twitch on its 9 July launch and drew nearly 100,000 players online on Steam, peaking at 99,451 concurrent users. Ubisoft claimed that the highest concurrent player count ever recorded for an Assassin's Creed title on Steam, beating the previous franchise best of 64,825 set by Assassin's Creed: Shadows.

Critics arrived at the same verdict before the sales did. Reviewers said Ubisoft had successfully made a worthy remake and praised the graphics and the refinements to combat and ship gameplay. The game holds an 84 on Metacritic from 72 reviews and 87 on OpenCritic, with 94 percent of critics recommending it, the highest-rated Assassin's Creed in 13 years and above recent entries such as Odyssey at 83.

Black Flag Resynced is set during the Golden Age of Piracy and casts players as Edward Kenway, a pirate captain pulled into the centuries-old fight between Assassins and Templars.

"As Edward pursues glory and fortune, he crosses paths with legendary figures such as Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, and Calico Jack, while the fate of everything the pirates have built hangs in the balance."

— Ubisoft

The game is out on PC through Steam, Steam Deck, the Epic Games Store, and Ubisoft+, plus PS5 and Xbox Series. Estimates based on HowLongToBeat data put the Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced main story at roughly 30 hours, with full completion closer to 70, after Ubisoft added about six hours of content over the original.

Not all of the reaction has been positive. On Steam the game sits at 52 percent positive, with players flagging the Ubisoft launcher, a 30 FPS cap in cutscenes, the reworked combat, the loss of the hidden blade as a usable weapon, and enemy health bars that turn some foes into mini-bosses. Reviewers who liked it pointed to the graphics, the optimization, and the stealth-focused mission design. The sharpest complaints target monetization, since the cosmetic DLC for Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is priced above the game's Deluxe Edition. I see the microtransaction backlash as the predictable catch, because Ubisoft confirmed at its April reveal that the remake would ship without DLC, and leaks then pointed to a fiery Edward Kenway cosmetic pack anyway.

"This is content removed from the game and then sold again Ubisoft's greed knows no limits."

— Pirat_Nation

The launch also came with layoffs. Insider Gaming reported that 51 developers at Ubisoft Barcelona, the team behind Black Flag Resynced, were let go, and that the remake was their final project. I keep thinking about those 51 developers, who shipped the franchise's biggest launch and lost their jobs once it was done.

The remake was already tracking ahead of Assassin's Creed Shadows before launch. Its pre-orders alone pulled in about $14 million from roughly 300,000 sales, topping the lifetime total of Ubisoft's other pirate game, 2024's Skull & Bones. That strengthens the case for more remakes, with a remake of Assassin's Creed 1 (2007) shaping up as the likely next step.

Read also, Ubisoft has begun teasing a remake of the original Assassin's Creed from 2007, with series character Desmond Miles surfacing in new Animus data files.