LogInFor most video games, the first weekend after their official release is the most crucial one – with the title's novelty usually attracting peak player numbers and passionate fans working overtime to fan the flames of hype across the internet – typically serving as a sign of things to come. During its first weekend, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows celebrated reaching a milestone of two million players, with the studio announcing the achievement on Saturday.
As shared by the franchise's official Twitter page, Assassin's Creed Shadows has now been played by over two million users across all platforms and stores, including Steam, Epic Games Store, Ubisoft+, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X. According to Ubisoft, in terms of attracted players, Shadows has now surpassed the launch numbers of Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey, released in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
Raining on Ubisoft's parade, however, is a sizeable chunk of the gaming community, pointing out several inconvenient facts that the company's executives surely wouldn't want anyone to notice. These include Ubisoft's reluctance to share actual sales numbers – a metric far more important than the vague "players reached," especially given the critical need for Shadows to be financially successful for the company's survival – the game's underwhelming peak player count of 64,000 on Steam – which, once again, means nothing on its own but serves as a useful indicator of general reception – and Shadows' user scores on Metacritic telling a different story compared to those from gaming journalists, currently sitting at 4.1/10 on PC and 5.8/10 on PlayStation 5.
Sadly, the gaming community is and will likely remain divided on Assassin's Creed Shadows, making it difficult for those uninterested in the debates and politics to gauge whether the game is a yay or a nay, however, it seems they're not the only ones left uncertain in this situation.
Apparently, investors also can't make up their minds on Ubisoft's latest title, with the company's stock price staying relatively stagnant around the game's release – going up ~7% on March 20 and then dropping ~7% at the close on March 21.
The market opening on Monday will likely reveal what investors – a group most AAA publishers are keen to appease – really think about Assassin's Creed Shadows, giving the public a point of reference to guesstimate whether Ubisoft is at risk of going bankrupt and providing one of the sides of the ongoing "comment war" with a solid argument.
And what about you, have you tried AC Shadows yet? What are your thoughts about the game so far? Share your thoughts down in the comments!
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