Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced Sells 2 Million Copies, Sets Steam Record Despite Launch Bugs
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced sold 2 million copies in its first 24 hours, Ubisoft confirmed Friday, alongside a new franchise record for concurrent players on Steam. The remake of 2013’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag launched July 9 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Here’s the world premiere trailer:
The game peaked at 99,451 concurrent players on Steam within its first day, more than 50% higher than the previous franchise record of 64,825 set by Assassin’s Creed Shadows. It also topped Twitch’s most-watched games chart on launch day. Ubisoft disclosed a specific unit sales figure this time, a break from how the publisher has typically reported recent Assassin’s Creed launches using revenue or player-count metrics.
Resynced currently holds an 85 average on OpenCritic across 145 critics and an 84 on Metacritic — the highest scores for an Assassin’s Creed title since the original Black Flag, which sits at 88 on Metacritic. That places Resynced fourth among mainline entries in the series, behind Assassin’s Creed 2 (90), Brotherhood (89), and the 2013 original, and ahead of every entry released since Assassin’s Creed 3. Player scores have tracked closely with critics: 4.79/5 on the PlayStation Store and 4.7/5 on the Xbox Store, with “Mostly Positive” user reviews on Steam.
That said, the praise wasn’t uniform. Several reviews flagged the removal of the original’s modern-day Abstergo storyline for a new Animus Hub interface tied to a battle-pass structure, a change that split opinion among critics who valued the franchise’s overarching lore. Launch-week reviews also noted specific bugs, including enemies reviving after confirmed kills, character lock-ups, and PC micro-stuttering during naval combat and in Havana. Ubisoft Singapore led development across 15 co-development studios, rebuilding the game from the ground up on the current version of Anvil and reusing none of the 2013 original’s assets.
Resynced is available on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, the Epic Games Store, the Ubisoft Store, and Ubisoft+. Whether Ubisoft treats the launch as a template for future remakes will likely come down to how the reception holds up once the bug reports and battle-pass criticism settle — that’s historically been the more durable signal than day-one sales alone.
