| It’s too big to fail, just like the banks in the U.S. |  |
[https://kotaku.com/first-it-was-an-assassins-creed-expansion-now-its-ubis-1847326742]
Skull & Bones was originally supposed to launch in late 2018. Then sometime in 2019. Then sometime after March 2020. Then sometime before March 2022. And now it’s due to come out before March 2023.
These messy prototyping phases aren’t unusual, but in Skull & Bones’ case, it never stopped. Meanwhile, despite each new reboot, teams were tasked with building something based on blueprints that kept dramatically changing. In 2015, there were roughly 100 people working on Skull & Bones, according to three sources. By 2019, there were closer to 400, with many from other Ubisoft studios pitching in despite ongoing tinkering with fundamental aspects of the game’s design.
For Skull & Bones, the way forward is less clear, sources said. On paper, Assassin’s Creed Infinity sounds a lot like the early ideas for Skull & Bones, and with Sea of Thieves continuing to sell well, Ubisoft’s pirate sim will have a lot to prove. Many of its developers are desperate for the game to finally ship just so that, good or bad, they can finally be free of it. But others know that in the world of games-as-a-service, the release date isn’t the end of development, it’s just the beginning.