Ubisoft is replying to Black Flag Resynced's negative Steam reviews to defend its day-one DLC

Ubisoft spent the week doing something publishers usually leave to community managers on X: replying, in public, to the people leaving negative reviews on its own Steam page.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced came out on July 9 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S at $59.99, with a $69.99 Deluxe Edition. Critics liked it. It sits at an 84 on Metacritic, and it pulled a peak of 99,451 concurrent players on Steam at launch, which is a bigger PC number than Assassin's Creed Shadows managed with 64,825. Then the Steam reviews landed on Mixed, and almost none of the complaints were about Edward Kenway.

What players are actually mad about

The remake shipped with a storefront attached. GAMES.GG counted nine purchasable DLC packs on PC and ten on PlayStation, and buying every one individually runs north of $95. Notebookcheck put the pile at roughly $90. Most of it is cosmetic: gear sets for Edward, matching ship skins, a Hellfire pack that dresses a Caribbean pirate as a flaming death knight. The one item with actual gameplay weight is a map pack that reveals collectible and Animus fragment locations, which is the sort of thing Deluxe buyers assumed they were already paying for.

The DLC list is the part that trends. The part that grates in play is the rest of it. Per GAMES.GG, the game has a cash shop, weekly challenges and a battle-pass style reward track, the store greets you on the main menu, and pausing can serve you promotional content, including ads for Assassin's Creed Shadows. The 2013 game you are being sold a remake of had none of that.

To be precise about what is and is not happening here: nothing is gated. No missions, no islands, no story beats sit behind the packs. This is not pay-to-win. It is a full-price single-player remake with a live-service skin stretched over it, and a chunk of the audience has decided that is enough to vote thumbs down.

Ubisoft's answer

Rather than let the reviews sit, Ubisoft replied to them directly on Steam:

"The standard edition is the full, complete experience. Every mission, every island, the full story and the complete world are all there, with nothing held back. The additional packs are entirely optional extras for players who want them, never a requirement to enjoy or complete the game."

That is accurate, and it also answers a complaint nobody was making. The reviewers are not claiming the campaign is cut up. They are saying they paid sixty dollars and got a shop counter in the pause menu. Ubisoft is arguing content; the reviews are arguing about the storefront. Two conversations, one review section.

It is not the only launch problem, either. Cutscenes render at 30 fps for a lot of PC players, and Ubisoft has posted settings that work around it on the Assassin's Creed account while a fix is in progress.

The people who made it are gone

Worth remembering who built this thing. Ubisoft Barcelona led the remake, and 51 of its employees were told in June they were being laid off. Staff who spoke to Insider Gaming said the cuts felt decided in advance, that the team had been flagging since summer 2025 that it had no next project assigned, and that the studio's launch celebration was replaced with catering in the office. The Barcelona team is striking on Tuesdays and Thursdays between June 30 and July 16.

So the scoreboard for Black Flag Resynced reads: best PC launch in the history of the series, an 84 average, a Mixed rating driven by a cash shop, and a disbanded development team. Whatever lesson Ubisoft takes from this quarter, it is unlikely to be the one about the shop.