Ubisoft announced that it is delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows another month after it previously delayed the game from November to February.
In a post to the official Assassin’s Creed account on X, Assassin’s Creed Executive Producer Marc-Alexis Cote stated, “We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to our incredible fans and dedicated teams for your unwavering support since our announcement in September to further refine and polish Assassin’s Creed Shadows.”
“Since November, we’ve been thrilled to share our progress through Gameplay Overviews, and the overwhelming excitement has truly inspired us,” he continued. Each week has brought valuable feedback from our community. While we’ve already made remarkable strides, we believe a few additional weeks are needed to implement that feedback and ensure an even more ambitious and engaging day-one experience.”
“Accordingly, the new release date is March 20, 2025. We remain committed to delivering a high-quality, immersive experience-fostered by ongoing dialogue between our players and development teams,” he shared.
Back in September, Ubisoft announced it was delaying the game to February. In a press release it stated, “Assassin’s Creed Shadows will now be released on 14 February 2025.”
The company explained, “While the game is feature complete, the learnings from the Star Wars Outlaws release led us to provide additional time to further polish the title. This will enable the biggest entry in the franchise to fully deliver on its ambition, notably by fulfilling the promise of our dual protagonist adventure, with Naoe and Yasuke bringing two very different gameplay styles.”
Furthermore, the company revealed, “We are departing from the traditional Season Pass model. All players will be able to enjoy the game at the same time on February 14 and those who preorder the game will be granted the first expansion for free.”
The company concluded, “The game will mark the return of our new releases on Steam Day 1.”
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot confirmed at the end of October that the company would spend an additional €20 million on development.
Guillemot was asked by a BMO investor during the company’s First-Half 2024-25 Earnings Figures Conference Call, “On [Assassin’s Creed] Shadows, you guys said you delayed the game, you keep saying it was feature ready, so I am curious when you went through and looked back at the game were you guys finding bugs? Looking back were you glad you moved it? And I think you talked about an extra €20 million in development costs from doing this, how is that tracking?”
Guillemot responded, “On [Assassin’s Creed] Shadows what we had said was that on the back of what we saw with Outlaws we need to really make sure that we come with an impeccable player experience. Of course, there are always some bugs, but we’ve been focusing and continue focusing on making sure that the day one experience will be well optimized.”
Next, he confirmed, “And, yes, you are right we had mentioned that would translate into about €20 million in the total budget as we’ve kept a strong level of resources on this last phase of development and polishing.”
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As for what the company is spending the €20 million on Tom Henderson at Insider Gaming claimed that the polishing of the game “includes changing some of Yasuke’s story and how he’s portrayed in the game, fixing architectural details, and ensuring that the game is historically grounded while fitting into the Assassin’s Creed universe.”
Henderson also added that “The game is currently not at the stage it needs to be for release, and I’m told that there have been some tweaks to some gameplay mechanics and elements that are going to take time to incorporate.”
A separate rumor from Brazilian YouTuber tvPH also claimed that the game was a buggy mess.
He said, “The problem that is going on inside is a very simple one. The game is buggy, which is something that is traditional to the Assassin’s Creed series, right? Especially when they are making this transition and internal technology. Assassin’s Creed Unity was very dramatic. Assassin’s Creed Origins also had a lot of problems at the time of launch.”
“And Assassin’s Creed Shadows also offers a change of internal technology within the game that was most likely causing these bugs,” he continued. “So it’s not a completely new thing, right, a buggy launch of Assassin’s Creed. But there’s a very marked difference in the days of Unity, in the days of Origins, Ubisoft was safer. Ubisoft was calm.”
“But in September 2024 Ubisoft had just launched and seen Star Wars Outlaws flop, which was a game that they expected would completely explode into being one of the biggest titles of the year and from the looks of it, it sold just OK. It sold like the least a Star Wars game should sell when there is no public interest in it, right? And part of the problem was that the game was completely bugged at launch. Ubisoft even had to apologize to the fans and promise that they are working on urgent fixes for performance problems on all platforms,” he added.
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YouTuber Endymion also detailed, “One of the things for sure getting removed from Shadows, according to my sources, is indeed the rap, hip-hop music for Yasuke. Apparently Ubisoft brought out a questionnaire and they were unanimously told that the rap music was tonally wrong and completely unneeded. And that it was actually offensive that Ubisoft believed Yasuke needed a hip-hop battle theme in a game that was set well before such music existed and it was only implemented ’cause Yasuke was black.”
“They are also going to be removing dialogue from the game that according to my source told me that it would actually enrage players it they heard it,” he added. “I wasn’t given concrete examples of what kind of dialogue but the source assumed it may have been Yasuke saying some sort of sociopolitical pandering nonsense about he was sold by white men or something and that he hates white men and white supremacy must be abolished and such.”
“They’re also removing this because, of course, if that were in the game it would absolutely be highlighted and used to detract even more people from supporting the game in the future,” Endymion shared.
What do you make of Ubisoft delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows again?
Wasted money. It’ll be a flop. The people you’d expect to be the market, Japanophiles will steer way clear since why would anyone interested in Japanese culture want to play a black Samurai?
And as for Assassina Creed fans? They got lots of actually good, old AC games to play already.
It's delayed because they don't want their Stocks to drop before Tencent buys them out..........