Skull and Bones gets buried again

Ubisoft’s open-world, co-op pirate adventure game keeps failing to launch

You’re not gonna believe this, but Skull and Bones is getting delayed again. The news was first reported by Kotaku and later confirmed by Ubisoft a little less than two months before the game’s November 8th release date.

“Our team is hard at work polishing and balancing the experience ahead of the worldwide launch,” Ubisoft stated on its blog announcing the news. “As a result, we’ve made the tough decision to move our release date to March 9th, 2023.”

Constant delays have plagued Skull and Bones’ development since its 2017 announcement. Ubisoft Singapore, the studio in charge of Skull and Bones’ development, was also under investigation after Kotaku published reports of sexual harassment and pay discrimination taking place there. Since then, the investigation was closed, and the studio was cleared of any wrongdoing. As Ubisoft slowly ramped up marketing, even dedicating a portion of September’s Ubisoft Forward presentation to showing off gameplay, it seemed like finally the world would get to play Skull and Bones. Avast me hearties, yo no.

Though game delays are never fun, this might be an unexpected boon. The move shuffles the pirate adventure out of the extremely crowded holiday release lineup, taking it out of God of War: Ragnarok’s path. However, should the game be delayed again beyond its March 2023 release date, it’ll be brushing up against the May 2023 launch of Breath of the Wild: Tears of the Kingdom. Unlucky.