Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced (a title with 0 colons in it anywhere, apparently) has only been out for a day, and it’s already sold two million copies. That’s real good! We learned this today via an Ubisoft press release that also highlights its critical and streaming success.
Seems like folks like this game, and want to play it! Cool! I wonder if it’s any more or less popular than other Assassin’s Creed titles? Let’s just take a look at official Ubisoft-provided sales figures for some of the other recent Assassin’s Creeds and see how it compares.
Sorry, what’s that? There are no official unit sales figures? Going back…years?
That can’t be right.
It’s true. This is the first time Ubisoft has given us a specific number of how many copies one of its Assassin’s Creed games has sold since the original Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, over a decade ago. That’s kind of nuts!
Assassin’s Creed Shadows apparently delivered “the second-highest Day 1 sales revenue in franchise history—second only to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla” and set “a new record for Ubisoft’s Day 1 performance on the PlayStation digital store.” That’s according to Ubisoft’s own financials. As you’ll see below, we don’t actually have comparable numbers for Valhalla or anything else in order to be able to say how much money that is, and it also doesn’t tell us anything about unit sales. By July 2025, the game had surpassed five million players, but that includes people subscribed to Ubisoft+ Premium, so this doesn’t actually tell us how many people bought it.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage is in a similar boat, with Ubisoft reporting that it had surpassed 10 million players following its Valley of Memory update, but that again doesn’t tell us how many copies it actually sold given its availability on Ubisoft+ and given that the first two hours were playable for free at one point.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla had the best launch sales of any Assassin’s Creed game up to that point according to Ubisoft, but we don’t know how many that was because we don’t know how many copies any of the others sold over the same period Ubisoft is counting here. In October of 2022, it had reached over 20 million players, but that again factors in subscription services, and the game also had a free weekend at one point that could be included.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is widely known as having been pretty successful too, so surely Ubisoft shared some actual, proper sales figures for this one? Kiiiiind of. In an earnings report from May 2020, Ubisoft revealed that 11 of its games had sold over 10 million copies, a list which included Odyssey, Assassin’s Creed Unity, and Assassin’s Creed Origins. This is probably the most concrete number Ubisoft has ever given regarding these games, but just how much more than 10 million remains unclear, so it’s still not especially useful for anything.
Assassin’s Creed Origins’Â sales were apparently twice that of Syndicate in the first 10 days, but it’s unclear if that’s in revenue or unit sales or something else, or even what Syndicate‘s first 10 day sales were. Also, like Odyssey, it sold over 10 million copies at some point, but we have no idea how much more.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, which came out in 2015, allegedly had sold 5.5 million units by 2017. I’ve seen that number thrown around a lot as an official one, but I’ve gone through several years of Ubisoft earnings and press releases and couldn’t find a source for this number aside from an article by Wcctech, so I’m not sure if it’s a Ubisoft-provided number or an analyst estimate. If it is indeed an official number, then I apologize to Ubisoft and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, but as far as I can tell Ubisoft was mostly a little embarrassed by Syndicate‘s sales so I can’t fathom it would have shared such a specific figure.
Assassin’s Creed Unity and Assassin’s Creed Rogue sold a combined 10 million units as of December 2014. Oof, so close! That’s almost a sales figure, guys! But you can’t put two games together like that. Please tell us how much each one sold. As a reminder, Unity was also in the list of games that had reached 10 million copies by May 2020, but we have no idea how close to or how far above 10 million it was.
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (the original one) sold 11 million copies as of March 2014! We did it! Ubisoft shared a sales figure!
Maybe this doesn’t matter to you, and honestly, for most people, it probably shouldn’t. But it does highlight a really irritating yet common activity among companies like Ubisoft: obfuscating how well or poorly games do by hiding behind random figures. Ubisoft has shared some sort of metric for all the games above. The problem is, it only shares the things it thinks will sound most impressive. Millions of players over several months. A million sales in 10 days. Such-and-such revenue over such-and-such period. 50-percent more something than the last something, for which we do not have numbers. This is so common, and it makes it impossible to sort out any real, useful information if you’re a journalist, analyst, enthusiast, or someone else who has any business or interest in knowing what’s going on with Ubisoft.
So yes, Black Flag Resynced sold two million copies in a day. That sounds pretty impressive, and it probably is if Ubisoft is owning up to a certain amount of unit sales for the first time in over a decade. But I think the only real conclusion I can draw from it is that people really like Black Flag, and always have. I don’t know what this can tell me about Assassin’s Creed more broadly, or what the hell is going on with Ubisoft writ large, something I am very eager to know more about given the company’s seeming dire straits over the last year and as recently as this week. If two million in a day wasn’t enough to save the developers at Ubisoft Barcelona, what level of success would have been?
