Assassins's Creed: Shadows with one of the highest activity records in the series' history. Ubisoft's new game has one million players
Assassins's Creed: Shadows has one of the best launches on Steam in the series' history.
Update (March 20)
Literally a minute after the publication of this news, Ubisoft announced that on day day, a million players played Assassin’s Creed: Shadows on all platforms.
Original news
Releasing yesterday, Assassin's Creed: Shadows can boast one of the strongest launches in the series' history on Steam. According to SteamDB, Ubisoft's latest game reached a peak number of 41,412 concurrent users (via SteamDB), which puts it in third place in the series' history (although it's uncertain whether it might not jump to the second spot).
SteamDB.info
Better start than Valhalla and Mirage, just a hair's breadth from Origins
The new Assassin's Creed almost immediately left behind AC: Valhalla and AC: Mirage. It's important to note that these releases were not available on Steam at launch (initially, they were only available on PC through the Ubisoft Store and Epic Games Store) - thus, the competition wasn't completely fair. The real challenge, however, was AC: Origins and AC: Odyssey. For comparison:
- Assassin's Creed: Valhalla - 15,679 concurrent players (released on Steam over 2 years after the launch);
- Assassin's Creed: Mirage - only 7,837 concurrent players (released on Steam a year after the launch);
- Assassin’s Creed: Origins - 41,541 concurrent players;
- Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey - 61,984 concurrent players.
AC: Shadows is one step away from surpassing Origins, and considering that the number of active players may still increase in the coming days (especially over the weekend), it is even possible to challenge Odyssey—the current record holder of the series on Steam. The highest-rated game about hooded assassins, the iconic Assassin's Creed 2, managed to attract only 3,617 players at its "peak" after its release on Steam. It's worth noting that the older "Assassins" games hit PC some time after their console premiere, which could have influenced players' platform choice to some extent.
Right now, the title is also receiving "very positive" reviews on Steam - 80% of the opinions are positive (out of over 2200 all submitted). Unlike many previous installments, AC: Shadows didn't suffer from a plague of bugs at launch, which players liked very much. However, criticism is directed at the requirement to use Ubisoft Connect and microtransactions.
Will Assassin’s Creed: Shadows finally break Odyssey's record? Time will tell - after all, the bar is set quite high. Nonetheless, it's clear that the game, despite the controversy, is attracting a lot of interest.
- Assassin's Creed: Shadows Review: Great combat and stealth, where plot plays it too safe
- Assassin’s Creed: Shadows - guide
