A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

A new rumor claims that Assassin’s Creed Shadows pre-orders were extraordinarily terrible so much so that they were “only about 7% the pre-ordered numbers of Valhalla during the same time period.”

A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

This new rumor comes from YouTuber Endymion who spoke with multiple Ubisoft insiders.

He shared, “Another very damning allegation I was told by sources was that compared to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla that Shadows has only about 7% the pre-order numbers of Valhalla during the same time period. You heard that right guys, 7% of Valhalla.”

READ: Financial Analyst Describes Ubisoft’s Sales Collapse And Delaying Of ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ As “Total Meltdown” As Stock Price Collapses

This rumor comes in the wake of a previous one from Craig Skistimas aka Stuttering Craig the owner of the Side Scrollers Podcast that claimed Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ physical pre-orders was less than 1 per store.

He shared on X at the end of August, “My insider told me that, as of this morning at their nation wide big box chain, Assassins’ Creed Shadows has less than 800 pre-orders combined for Xbox & PS5 company wide.”

He added, “They have over 900 stores. That is less than 1 preorder per store. YIKES.”

 

Financial analyst Valliant Renegade also speculated that pre-order sales for Assassin’s Creed Shadows were subpar and was one of the reasons why Ubisoft chose to delay the game to February 2025.

In a statement given to That Park Place, he shared, “Once UBISOFT cancelled their worldwide press events, even pulling out of the massive Tokyo Game Show, the writing was on the wall that AC Shadows was going to get pushed back. UBISOFT obviously saw what was coming, and that was likely a serious underperformance of sales upon the games initial release date target of Nov 15th.”

“UBISOFT says the next 90 days will afford them time to ‘polish the game’ but they also seem desperate to release it BEFORE the end of their fiscal year on March 31st 2025 as profitability guidance has concurrently been adjusted DOWN with the gamemaker basically hoping to just maybe break-even on the year,” Valliant Renegade added.

He concluded, “It’s a total mess right now.”

A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

The game’s pre-orders on the PlayStation store did not look great. The Ultimate Edition of the game, which costs $129.99 was 16th behind New World: Aeternum, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Silent Hill 2, Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns Expansion, and Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO back on September 20th. It was in the 14th spot.

The base game was even further down the list in the 21st place behind Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, Throne and Liberty, and Sonic X Shadow Generations. The gold edition sat on the second page in 30th place.

A screenshot of the PlayStation Store’s top pre-orders taken on September 20th at 11:14 am ET

As noted by Valliant Renegade, Ubisoft’s official reasoning for delaying the game is to “polish” it.

In a press release, the company stated, “Assassin’s Creed Shadows will now be released on 14 February 2025. 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.”

Ubisoft added, “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 game will mark the return of our new releases on Steam Day 1.”

A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

Aside from the analysis from Valliant Renegade and the official statement from Ubisoft, Brazilian YouTuber tvPH shared that a source inside Ubisoft informed him the delay was simply due to the game being “buggy.”

He stated, “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.

A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

What do you make of this new rumor regarding the pre-order sales for Assassin’s Creed Shadows?