EXCLUSIVE – Context Around the Assassin’s Creed Shadows Delay

Last week, Ubisoft announced that Assassin’s Creed Shadows would be delayed from its intended November release date to February 2025. While the announcement was somewhat of a shock publically, internally, it was expected and desperately needed.

Ubisoft announced that the game was delayed “to polish and refine the experience. “ In its earnings update, the company further claimed that the delay was due to “the learning from the Star Wars Outlaws release.” Both claims are true, but beyond a few short words, internally, the developers have been pushing for a delay for the best part of a few months, which had fallen on deaf ears until the release of Outlaws.

Yves Guillemot pointed out in an internal memo that Star Wars Outlaws’ initial sales “proved softer than expected,” with Guillemot pointing out that critics rated the game 76 out of 100 on Metacritic (I think it’s important to note that the user score is far lower at a 5.4 out of 10, too). Although I wasn’t given the figure on what Ubisoft anticipated Outlaws to sell within its first month, the game has just surpassed 1 million units sold at the time of writing. Its performance has seemingly caused alarm bells to ring at HQ, which not only led to the approval of Assassin’s Creed Shadows being delayed to Q1 2025 but to finally putting games back on Steam (a request that every Ubisoft team has been pushing for years).

So why was Shadows delayed? It’s a complicated question without a single answer, but it boils down to a strict development timeline, polishing, and addressing the Japanese community’s cultural and historical accuracy concerns.

But first, let me address some of the wild rumors about Yasuke—he’s not going to be removed. However, sources have said that the team has been actively addressing many of the historical and cultural concerns, which started before the game’s reveal following external playtests and were accelerated further following the game’s initial reveal and mass feedback. This includes changing some of Yasuke’s story and how he’s portrayed in the game, fixing architectural details, and ensuring that the game is historically grounded while fitting into the Assassin’s Creed universe. Fundamentally, though, these are issues that should have been caught internally before the game’s reveal, especially given Ubisoft’s strict asset-approval process. As for how these issues fell through the cracks, I’m told that historical experts were brought onto the project much later than usual for a project of this magnitude and that miscommunication between teams and cutting corners when it came to the approval process of assets to meet deadlines were also at play.

As for the game’s polish and issues with bugs, it’s pretty self-explanatory. The game is currently not at the stage it needs to be for release, and I’m told that there have been some tweaks to some gameplay mechanics and elements that are going to take time to incorporate. While some of these issues were highlighted in recent playtests and mock reviews, these are end-of-development issues that will take a little longer.

Of course, these are not new issues for the team. Seven developers working on the project said that they have been pushing for a delay for some time, and their situation had even been heard at other studios in the company. Ultimately, though, the delay comes down to a strict development timeline and the need to address issues caused by the set timeline. As for why Ubisoft HQ continues to ignore the developers on almost every level, Ubisoft’s Executive Committee and Board of Directors will decide in their review – although 80% of 40 Ubisoft developers think this ends in no change or layoffs – but that’s another story on the internal issues for another time.

For now, though, Ubisoft Quebec will release Assassin’s Creed Shadows on February 14, 2025, and while the game isn’t matching Valhalla in pre-order numbers (which launched on Steam and past-generation consoles), the numbers are solid and are likely to rise further given its Steam release announcement.

You can watch a video version of this report below:

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