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Black Flag Resynced Sells 2 Million on Launch Day but Faces Player Backlash and Studio Strikes

The remake’s strong first-day sales highlight a clash between commercial success and controversy over day‑one microtransactions, always‑online activation and proposed layoffs that have prompted union strikes.

Overview

  • Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced launched on July 9 and sold two million copies on its first day, giving the remake record Steam concurrency and strong critic scores.
  • Players discovered extensive day‑one paid DLC and microtransactions totaling roughly $80 to £75, which triggered Steam review‑bombing even as Ubisoft said the standard edition contains the full game.
  • A Ubisoft Connect outage briefly prevented some PC owners from playing because the game requires a one‑time online activation, and players also reported bugs such as a 30 fps cutscene cap and water and ship glitches.
  • Ubisoft Barcelona, the team credited with the remake’s underwater work, faces a proposed layoff of 51 staff and has held union-organized strikes in mid‑July to demand job protections and paused remote‑work changes.
  • Ubisoft’s latest financial filing drops last year’s ‘microtransactions make games more fun’ language, promises technical fixes and limited in‑game rewards, and forecasts a quieter near term ahead of a larger content pipeline in fiscal years 2027–28 and 2028–29.