Skull and Bones associate director departs Ubisoft after 15 years with the company
Ubisoft's pirate romp has seen its share of development troubles, and now, it has lost its associate director.
Skull and Bones has lost its associate director, Antoine Henry, who has been with Ubisoft for 15 years. Henry was also the lead game designer on the Ubisoft Singapore project from 2014 to 2017 before becoming its associate director.
Henry also co-managed development on Assassin's Creed Valhalla and its Siege of Paris expansion and worked as a senior game designer on a 2014 canceled project for PSN/XBLA/Steam/iOS/Android as well as on the original Watch Dogs title.
Announced at E3 2017, Skull and Bones has been in development since 2013 and started as an offshoot of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. Instead of being released as a post-launch update, the project became its own title and went into development at Ubisoft Singapore.
Initially announced as a cooperative multiplayer title with PvP and environmental factors to contend with, the game was slated to be released in 2018 before being delayed into 2019. In May of that year, the game was once again delayed into Ubisoft's 2020/2021 fiscal year.
Since its announcement, the game has undergone a reboot and is now expected to be released sometime after April 2022 as a live service game.
A report from July 2021 stated the game was currently in alpha and that the many delays can be attributed to mismanagement, staff and management changes, corporate feedback, annual reboots, and the fact there was never a "clear creative vision behind it." The Kotaku report also stated the project sailed past its initial budget and has cost Ubisoft around $120 million. It was said that employees from other Ubisoft studios had started pitching in on the game's development.
Hopefully, after all its issues, development is now running smoothly and we will finally get our hands on it sometime this year - unless it suffers another delay. Let's cross our fingers that it won't.