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Black Flag Resynced Sells Two Million but Faces Backlash Over Microtransactions, DRM and Layoffs

The game's strong launch is prompting scrutiny of Ubisoft's paid‑content choices, always‑online validation and recent staff cuts that could shape the publisher's future approach.

Yves Guillemot, chief executive officer of Ubisoft SA, at the company's headquarters in Paris, France, on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. The five Guillemot brothers have forged a common vision for Ubisoft which they founded in the 1980s in a sleepy northwestern French town, catapulting it into one of the largest stand-alone studios in the $200 billion global video games industry. Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Assassins Creed Black Flag Resynced gameplay screenshot of
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Overview

  • The remake sold two million copies on day one after its July 9 launch and set new series records for Steam concurrency while earning generally strong reviews.
  • Players discovered roughly $80–85 of paid add‑ons visible at launch, which drove review‑bombing and prompted Ubisoft to say the standard edition contains the full game and that extra packs are optional.
  • A Ubisoft Connect outage over the weekend prevented many PC owners from launching the game and showed the advertised offline mode did not work as players expected, while some pirated copies reportedly continued to run.
  • Ubisoft Barcelona, which built Resynced's praised underwater levels, is scheduled to cut 51 roles and began a three‑day strike on July 14 to demand the layoffs be halted and job protections restored.
  • Ubisoft's recent financial filing removed a prior claim that microtransactions 'make games more fun' and signalled a lighter near‑term release slate followed by a larger content pipeline in fiscal years 2027–28 and 2028–29, a shift that may heighten debates over monetization, DRM and studio staffing.