Skull And Bones Hasn't Yet Reached 1 Million Players, Even With Its Free Trial - Report

Apparently people have decided it's not a pirate's life for them. A new report states Skull and Bones has only seen about 850,000 players total since launching last week--and that number includes free-trial users.

Insider-Gaming spoke with sources about metrics for Skull and Bones, discovering the pirate game has failed to reach a million players so far. Why that's particularly concerning for Ubisoft is the fact there's a free eight-hour trial of Skull and Bones available on all platforms. However, supposedly people who do set sail in the title are averaging roughly 3-4 hours of playtime daily. That's a strong engagement number. GameSpot did reach out to Ubisoft for comment but didn't hear back by time of publication.

For comparison, two other games that have released this year have seen impressive concurrent player counts on Steam alone. Palworld became the second game ever to top 2 million concurrent players on Steam--and it has a whopping 25 million players overall--while this month Helldivers 2 has surpassed 400,000 concurrent players. These are figures for people playing a game at the same time. Skull and Bones isn't on Steam so publicly available concurrent player counts aren't available.

Internally, one reason being tossed about for the low player base so far is the retail price for Skull and Bones, according to Insider-Gaming. One source supposedly said the pirate game shouldn't have been more than $30-$40 at most. Skull and Bones--while a live-service title--costs $70.

There is a Year-1 roadmap for Skull and Bones, with seasons focusing on new legendary pirate lords and ships. The first season is called Raging Tides and sees players battling the "diseased" Philippe La Peste.

For more, check out GameSpot's Skull and Bones review as well as the guides hub for the pirate game.