Ubisoft's Skull & Bones has suffered eight years of troubled development

If y'all click on a link and brand a purchase we may receive a pocket-sized commission. Read our editorial policy.

Ubisoft'south Skull & Bones has suffered eight years of troubled development

A lengthy Kotaku written report details current and onetime staff's difficulties at the Singapore studio

If you take a expect at our Skull & Bones tag on RPS, it's clear the always-upcoming pirate game has had its fair share of troubles. It'due south suffered four delays, the removal of a managing manager and a change in vision, and until now we could only wonder what was actually happening behind the scenes. But now a new report tells of eight years of rocky development at Ubisoft'southward Singapore studio: from mismanagement and issues with creative vision, to a deal with the Singapore authorities promising to release the game.

In a lengthy study past Kotaku, a number of bearding current and onetime Ubisoft staff spoke of a tumultuous evolution on a game that, eight years on, still isn't taking shape. In 2013, Skull & Bones started life as an expansion for Assassinator's Creed: Black Flag, before turning into an MMO-like spin-off Blackness Flag Infinite, and so somewhen the potential alive service pirate game being made now.

"If Skull & Basic were at a competitor it would have been killed 10 times already," one former developer told Kotaku.

The game has reportedly blown through all its budgets, and toll Ubisoft over $120 one thousand thousand then far - a number that's but increasing as more devs pitch in to help ship the game. Three sources told Kotaku that the game can't even be scrapped considering of a deal with the Singapore government. It requires that Ubisoft Singapore launch original games in the next few years in club to receive subsidy payments.

The seemingly never-ending product seems to have taken its toll on developers, with electric current devs hoping that they can avoid a similar fate to games like BioWare's Anthem, only at the same time they desperately want to move on to something new.

"When a project drags for more than a couple years, your initial assumptions are no longer valid," a former dev said. "Applied science was moving forrard, and pretty soon you lot want meliorate visuals. And then you realize that some of your assets don't fit anymore… and the more and more than you lot start to change, the more parts become obsolete."

As development continued over the years, multiple developers spoke of an "exodus" of staff leaving the studio, with i person claiming: "People would acquire about the project, see how it works and everything around it, then get out. It was constant."

In response to questions from Kotaku, Ubisoft gave a statement saying: "The Skull & Basic team are proud of the piece of work they've achieved on the project since their final update with product only passing Alpha, and are excited to share more details when the time is right."

At this point, it seems as though the "right fourth dimension" for Skull & Bones may have already been and gone. I highly recommend reading Kotaku'southward full study to get the bigger picture.