After years of waiting, Ubisoft’s high seas piracy game Skull and Bones (opens in new tab) is looking more and more like it might soon see the light of day. Some of the signs are official, like Ubisoft’s March request for testers, and others are more inadvertent, such as the April leak of a six-minute video (opens in new tab) showing NPC mutinies and ship crafting. And now another leak, from Twitter account Aggiornamenti Lumia, says the game will finally launch on November 8.
Aggiornamenti Lumia, which is known for leaking information from the Microsoft and Xbox online stores, said that an official announcement of Skull and Bones is “imminent,” and that Xbox Store listings with preorder bonus details (opens in new tab) are ready to go, but not yet public.
Skull and Bones made a very good first impression when it was announced in 2017, but ran into trouble shortly after. It’s been delayed multiple times, and in 2020 the managing director of Ubisoft Singapore, the studio working on the game, was removed from his position (opens in new tab) following an audit into widespread workplace misconduct. It was most recently pushed into FY2023 (opens in new tab), which on a calendar puts it somewhere between April 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023.
The November launch date isn’t official, but it does jibe with other recent Skull and Bones developments, including the recent appearance of the game on the ESRB (opens in new tab) website, all of which points to a Skull and Bones release coming sooner rather than later. It also fits with the expected timeline: Ubisoft recommitted to an FY2023 release (opens in new tab) for Skull and Bones in February, and a November release makes perfect sense for hitting the holiday season.