According to a report by Kotaku, a deal with the Singaporean government is helping to keep Ubisoft's ambitious pirate game, Skull & Bones, afloat. The game was initially planned as an expansion to Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, back in 2013, but since then has been in design hell due to "a classic case of mismanagement for eight years,” according to one former developer.
Fresh off the success of Black Flag, Skull & Bones was originally planned as a multiplayer expansion to the popular game, under the working title of Black Flag Infinite, similar to Ubisoft's recently announced Assassin's Creed Infinity. It was meant to be a quick and easy expansion, but “Nobody knew what the fuck they were doing,” said an ex-developer.
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Kotaku reports that the game has apparently cost Ubisoft upwards of $120 million, but a deal with the government of Singapore, where the main development studio making the game is based, is providing "generous subsidies". The conditions of these subsidies include hiring people at the Ubisoft Singapore studio, and the studio releasing original IPs over the next few years.
According to Kotaku's sources, who consist of several current and former developers, Skull & Bones lacked any form of stability. Managers were constantly brought on who would redesign the game from the ground up, only to be replaced by a new manager who would do the same thing. This process has left some of the team feeling demotivated and burnt out. The issues surrounding development are so bad that one former developer said, "the team became more and more junior because all the talent and all the experience would leave constantly”.
Skull & Bones' design has been so turbulent, that decisions such as “Do you play as a pirate or do you play as a boat?” went round in circles as management tried to decide what kind of game to make. They say too many cooks spoil the broth, and this is evident in the size of the team working on Skull & Bones – "In 2015, there were roughly 100 people working on Skull & Bones, according to three sources. By 2019, there were closer to 400."
Reviews of Ubisoft Singapore on Glassdoor complain of a toxic work environment, a culture of fear, and uncompetitive salaries, adding to recent reports that Ubisoft hasn't adequately addressed workplace issues. According to Kotaku, many of the developers on the project just want it to ship so that they can be free of it, but if it's a live-service game, its maiden voyage will only be the beginning.
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Source: Kotaku
