Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced Beats Shadows at Launch, yet Ubisoft Rewards Barcelona Office With 51 Layoffs

Jul 10, 2026 at 07:00am EDT
A character from Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced perched on a rooftop overlooking a vibrant colonial town.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, the remake of 2013's beloved game, is out now, and it's off to a promising start. Pre-order data already indicated that sales were tracking higher than Assassin's Creed Shadows; it's still early days, but the game peaked at nearly 100K concurrent players on Steam, far higher than the 64K reached by Shadows.

Moreover, the game has received an average critic score of 84 on Metacritic, higher than any recent Assassin's Creed games since Black Flag itself (which got 88 at the time). Here on Wccftech, Kai Tatsumoto rated it 8.6 out of 10 with the following final remarks:

Related Story Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced Review – Reviving the Franchise’s Best Era, More than a Decade After its PS4 Debut

Historically, Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag was my favorite Assassin's Creed title almost solely because it felt the least like an Assassin's Creed game in terms of structure and felt more like a pirate adventure in the West Indies. That much still holds true in 2026, even with other titles perhaps nailing that feel of being a pirate more naturally, whether it's Ubisoft's other title, Skull and Bones, or the unexpected Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Everything from the way story missions play out to the melee and ship combats feels like a natural evolution of what Ubisoft Montreal brought to the world more than a decade ago. If you aren't one to let the omission of Black Flag's adventures of Aveline and Adéwalé sour the experience, you'll find that Black Flag Resynced has aged like a fine Caribbean rum.

Despite all this, Ubisoft has just laid off 51 employees at the Barcelona office, which also worked on Black Flag Resynced. The staff went on strike, but so far, it hasn't helped.

This is unfortunately the seventh wave of layoffs at Ubisoft in 2026 alone. Here's a brief recap:

We're now up to around 731 job cuts at the publisher in 2026. Of course, Microsoft easily "overtook" Ubisoft in this unfortunate chat with its 3,200 layoffs across Xbox.

About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.

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