WTF?! Want to know why Ubisoft was willing to endure so much hate and a temporarily negative Steam rating by including $85 worth of day-one DLC with Black Flag Resynced? The fact it made the company an extra $1 million probably explains it.
Ubisoft has a reputation for the amount of paid-for cosmetic and so-called time-saving extra content it adds to its titles, but making the combined cost of the DLC higher than the price of the game itself was a step too far for many Black Flag buyers. It caused the remake to be review-bombed on release, landing it a Mostly Negative score before climbing to the current Very Positive rating of 80%.
Ubisoft emphasized that the DLC is optional – the majority is made up of cosmetic items – and the resource/money packs and map packs are there for anyone who wants to speed things along, not offer gameplay advantages.
Ubisoft later emphasized that the standard edition of Black Flag Resynced offers the full complete experience, with every mission, island, and part of the story included.
According to Alinea Analytics, quite a lot of people purchased those fancy skins, extra resources, and map pack: the DLC brought in an extra $1 million on Steam alone.
That's a lot of money, but it still represents just 2.8% of the game's $35.1 million Steam revenue across the first four days after release.
The $4.99 Map Pack, which is the cheapest of these items, has a 6.34% Steam attach rate, so around 1 in 15 people bought it. The cosmetic packs' attachment rate was around 2%, meaning around 1 in 50 players bought them. It seems a lot of people don't want to find the Mayan stelae, shanties, treasure maps, letters, special chests, and Animus Keys the traditional way.
Following that initial backlash, Black Flag Resynced has become a huge hit, breaking the series' concurrent Steam player record by almost 40,000. Even the always-online requirement hasn't deterred people.
But while Ubisoft has been celebrating, attention has been drawn to the more than 380 people the company is laying off, announced before the game released. Fifty-one of them were from Ubisoft Barcelona and created all of Black Flag Resynced's underwater sections.