Black Flag Resynced Is a Hit. Its Cash Shop Isn't
Ubisoft's Black Flag remake drew near-record players, then Mixed Steam reviews, over a cash shop and roughly $90 in packs on a single-player game.
Ubisoft launched Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced on July 9, and by the numbers it was a hit. The ground-up remake of the 2013 Ubisoft Montreal favorite pulled a peak of nearly 100,000 concurrent players on Steam (99,451, by GamingBolt's count), the highest the series has ever posted there, ahead of last year's Shadows at 64,825. Then the Steam reviews cratered to Mostly Negative before clawing back to Mixed, and the reason had almost nothing to do with the game. It was the store bolted onto it.
Resynced is out on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC at $59.99, with a $69.99 Deluxe Edition, and on top of that sits close to $90 in separate packs (Insider Gaming and Notebookcheck both land near that figure; itemized counts run lower, roughly $65 to $85, depending on what you tally). Most of it is cosmetic: ship and character packs to redress Edward Kenway and his flagship. One pack is not just cosmetic: a paid map pack reveals treasure, Animus fragment, and reward locations, a functional shortcut sold on its own. Owners of the $69.99 Deluxe, which folds in only a couple of the packs, argued the rest should have come in the box they already paid extra for.
There is more than a storefront here. Per PC Gamer, the single-player remake also ships with a cash shop and weekly challenges; other coverage describes an in-menu store and limited-time "Anomaly" objectives feeding a reward track, the live-service furniture you would expect on a free-to-play game, not a $60 remake of a 13-year-old pirate adventure. Per Gamereactor, some players said they would turn to piracy over it. On PC, cutscenes also render at 30 fps, which stung the same crowd.
What it actually costs you
Here is the practical read, because the good news is real. The remake underneath is well made and warmly received, and Black Flag was always one of the series' most pleasant games to simply exist inside. Every one of those packs is optional, and because Resynced is single-player, whatever small edge the map pack buys only matters to the person who bought it. You can play the whole thing, ignore the menu store, skip the weekly checklist, and lose nothing. If you want Resynced, buy the base game, leave the packs, and go be a pirate. That's the whole monetization strategy, as far as you're concerned.
How the small studios do it
This is where the games we usually cover quietly make the case for us. When a solo or small team sells you a game, the cosmetics tend to be things you earn by playing, not products behind a menu. You unlock your looks in Hades by putting in the hours; one purchase of Stardew Valley has bought years of free updates from a single developer; Balatro asked for a price once and never mentioned your wallet again. No pause-screen shop, no weekly homework, no working out which edition is holding your outfit. Close to $90 is three or four complete indie games with nothing held back.
None of this sinks the remake itself, and the player numbers say plenty of people are out on the water having a great time. But a game this fondly remembered did not need a checkout counter in the pause menu, and the Mixed rating is a lot of players saying exactly that. Buy it if you loved Black Flag. The rest you can wave off.