A new rumor claims that Ubisoft delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows three months from its original planned release date in November 2024 to February 2025 because the game is “buggy.”
A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
Ubisoft announced it was delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows to February 14, 2025 earlier this week ahead of a trading call updating its financial targets for FY2024-25.
In a press release the company announced, “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.
It added, “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 game playstyles.”
A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
Furthermore, it shared, “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.”
It concluded, “The game will mark the return of our new releases on Steam Day 1.”
A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
Now, a new rumor from Brazilian YouTuber tvPH claims the reason the game was delayed is because it was “buggy.”
In the above video, he explains using Google’s auto-translate function, “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.
Key art for Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
While his inside sources at Ubisoft claim the reason for the delay is due to the game being buggy, financial analyst Valliant Renegade speculates the delay has to do with the company attempting to break even before the end of its fiscal year.
He explained, “Once Ubisoft cancelled their worldwide press events, even pulling out 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 game maker 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
What do you make of this latest rumor that Assassin’s Creed Shadows is full of bugs and that is the reason for the delay?
