Ever since Ubisoft revealed the historical Black samurai Yasuke as one of the two playable protagonists in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, a vocal corner of gaming has been rooting for its downfall. Scour through any comment section or forum, and you’ll even see brazen assumptions that Ubisoft’s tentpole RPG was doomed to failure because of him.
There was no world where this game would have failed.
The RPG-ified approach that we’ve grown accustomed to since Origins might be controversial among long-time fans, but they are some of the most successful entries in the series’ history. Valhalla, the third such game, even sold a staggering 20 million copies. Ubisoft stressed that “it was a perfect storm we may never see again”, launching in the throes of the pandemic, but that enormous success meant that a possible 20 million people were waiting with bated breath to see what would come next.
Assassin’s Creed Is Much Bigger Than We Give It Credit For
According to an internal email reviewed by IGN, what came next was a huge, record-breaking success. It was revealed that Shadows — when compared to games that launched in a more typical cycle, ie Odyssey and Origins — “is already setting a new bar”. It has a peak player count of 64,000 on Steam, the highest in the series, and yet PC only accounts for 27 percent of the game’s “activations”. Millions more are playing on console, where Shadows became the second-biggest launch yet.
Many have pointed to 64,000 as a low figure, but it’s a single-player game where concurrent counts don’t matter. Record-breakers like Baldur’s Gate 3 are incredibly rare.
The internet is a bubble that often fails to capture the sentiment of your average Joes (even if I work with a literal Joe who adores Assassin’s Creed). Your everyday gamer won’t care about historical inaccuracy or the backlash to Yasuke. They’ll just be happy to have a new triple-A checklist RPG where they get hundreds of hours of playtime, as most gamers don’t play all that many games.
And the eternally popular, best-selling IPs — your Call of Duties and FIFAs (now EA FCs) — are where they’ll spend most of their time. Assassin’s Creed has been among those ranks for years now, as Valhalla proved when we were all trapped indoors and needed something to whittle away the time with.
But even before Valhalla, the series was Ubisoft’s golden goose. The first game, released in 2007, sold eight million copies, a huge hit for a new IP. With each sequel, that figure steadily rose until hitting a crescendo with Black Flag, which sold 15 million copies back in 2013. The series only ever truly lulled with Syndicate, which still sold 5.5 million copies, as the old formula was exhausted, but the RPG elements introduced soon after reinvigorated Assassin’s Creed for a new generation and a new type of gamer.
Looking at that rich history of success, which hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down — but instead skyrocketed with each new release — it’s hard to fathom how anyone thought Shadows could fail.
The ‘Very Positive’ Steam reviews, broken records, and the fact that it hit two million players in mere days (reaching three million as I write this) all goes to show one thing — the online backlash was nothing more than a very vocal minority. The vast majority of people simply do not care: Assassin’s Creed’s sheer popularity was always going to eclipse the outrage.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
- Released
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March 20, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language
- Developer(s)
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Ubisoft Quebec