A couple days ago, Ubisoft announced that Assassin's Creed Shadows had crossed the 1 million 'player' count barrier, and now, Ubisoft’s official Assassin’s Creed X account recently doubled down with a bold claim:
“ 2 MILLION PLAYERS!
We’re thrilled to celebrate this incredible milestone!
Assassin's Creed Shadows has now surpassed the launches of AC Origins and Odyssey. Thank you for joining the journey in Feudal Japan!
On the surface, that sounds like a win, at least... to any corpo-lapdog. Come on now, Ubisoft. Seeing two million players already—surely that’s a slam dunk launch... Right? RIGHT!? Bueller?
But nah. Let’s take a closer look at what’s really going on behind the curtain here, because this is yet another case of corporate PR gymnastics hard at work.
Instead of announcing units sold, Ubisoft instead decides to push the more ambiguous “players engaged” metric. Why? Because hard sales numbers obviously aren’t looking nearly as impressive. We can gather with how Ubisoft has approached this whole PR situation that Shadows hasn't even crossed 1 million actual copies sold yet. If they did, that would have been what they announced. So then... what are they counting here?
The answer's simple: Ubisoft+.
With subscription services becoming the new norm for struggling publishers, Ubisoft's quietly funneling players into their own Game Pass-style model, where they can access Shadows—even its top-tier editions—for cheaper than buying the game at full price at launch. It’s not that millions of people bought the game. No... not even close. It’s that many are renting it for a few bucks instead. That’s a big difference. Not to mention the game was given out for free with any purchase of qualifying Intel Core processors and/or Intel Arc graphics cards.
Oh and yeah, that also adds in all those Steam players who bought the game only to return it less than 2 hours later, essentially not paying Ubisoft a dime to try it out. The “2 million players” claim here is more about optics than any kind of actual success. This kind of metric is designed to look flashy in a headline or a tweet, especially to people who aren’t paying attention. Normies and journos will scream “W” from the rooftops, while ignoring the fact that Ubisoft’s stock dropped over 7% on the day Shadows launched. Not exactly the sign of a record-breaking success. Follow the money. Investors aren't fooled by wordplay.
This whole “players engaged” tactic isn’t new either. We’ve seen it used before—as friend of the channel Hypnotic points out on X in reply to the same post from Assassin's Creed's UK account: Skull and Bones, Star Wars Outlaws, Dragon Age: The Veilguard all tried to manipulate perception with similar messaging. And what happened? Massive layoffs, development hell, or a slow crawl to irrelevance. It boils down to a PR strategy, not any cause for celebration.
Ubisoft needs Shadows to look like a win, especially after years of turmoil and declining investor confidence. They’re doing everything they can within their power to warp the numbers in a way that looks victorious. Banking on hopeful good press to keep the ship afloat. But when you compare it to breakout indie hits like Split Fiction—a game with actual sales and fan momentum—Shadows falls well short. Then when you add in the size of the teams and cost of the project? Oh boy. That's a YIKES moment...
Look, you can say a game is “popular” all you want because a million people rented it. Calling it a hit is like calling a fast food burger gourmet because it’s sold billions. Numbers don’t taste good. It might get a lot of traffic, but nobody’s actually taking it home.
Until Ubisoft drops actual real sales numbers, this “2 million players” stat they pushed out there is just noise.
Don’t let the smoke and mirrors fool you. Ubisoft's sweating bullets behind the scenes, but they don't want you to know that.
~Smash
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