Assassin’s Creed Shadows is shaping up to be a successful release for Ubisoft.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is looking like a hit for game publisher Ubisoft. Within a day of its release, Ubisoft confirmed that the game had racked up a whopping one million players worldwide. That number likely includes subscribers of Ubisoft+, the company’s subscription service that allows players to download and play games for a single monthly fee.
The company announced the news on Twitter/X:
Assassin’s Creed Shadows hits one million players in first day
Ubisoft has announced that Assassin’s Creed Shadows has crossed one million players within a day of its release. The company said on social media: “It's not even 4PM here in Canada and Assassin's Creed Shadows has already passed 1 million players! Thank YOU from the bottom of our hearts for joining this adventure in Feudal Japan. We are beyond excited to start this journey with you!”
These are pretty big launch numbers, but by no means should they be confused with sales numbers – a not-insignificant portion of these players are likely to have played the game through the Ubisoft+ subscription service. The service plays host to all of Ubisoft’s first-party games upon release, allowing players cheaper access to otherwise fairly expensive video games – albeit with the tradeoff that they lose access when their subscription ends.
Currently, the game is the #1 top-selling game on Steam, peaking at 41,412 concurrent players following its launch this week. That’s quite a bit higher than Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (roughly 15,679 peak concurrent players), although it should be noted that Valhalla only launched on Steam sometime after its original release date. A better point of comparison might be Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s peak concurrent players on Steam, which was 62,069.
Granted, Shadows’ numbers have time to rise even higher during the weekend, when people are more free to get their hands on the game. In our review of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, we said: “Assassin’s Creed Shadows sees Ubisoft once again flex its open-world prowess, showing that even after a string of recent misses and controversies, it still has the chops to craft a breathtaking open-world journey worth losing oneself in.”
