Copies of Assassin's Creed Shadows PS5 Sneak Past Official Release Date

@Steeleye50 Person literally says it's the best one so far since Black Flag.

@breakneck some of them have a narrative they have to adhere to. No matter what they hear, this will be the worst game ever.

@Steeleye50 “let’s just get this over with” type of mentality , lol

I know copies of games being leaked early has become a pretty common thing now to the point it's actually surprising when it doesn't happen, but for it to happen almost a full month before release is crazy if this is true.

@breakneck I hope people enjoy it. Ubisoft used to be my favorite game company, but I am just so burned out on "the formula" now I just can't do it anymore. If I have to do one more pointless filler fetch quest, I'm going to drive to Disney Star Wars land and punch a stormtrooper in the helmet.

@nomither6 oversaturation has killed them.

@Steeleye50 That's fair the last four Ubi games I enjoyed were Rayman Legends, Child of Light, WatchDogs 2 (the only AAA game I've liked in ages from UBI) and Prince of Persia Lost Crown.

A whole month early? That's got to be a record hasn't it. Game looks solid to be honest and I'll get round to it in a month or so when it hits sale price..won't be long.

@Steeleye50 Came here to say this haha

@breakneck Same as Veilguard was best Dragon Age since Inquisition, didnt make it any less of a disaster.

@Steeleye50 sounds like they actually love it. "Best one since black flag" even.

@KeanuReaves But Black Flag is terrible in almost every way that matters. Missions, stealth, combat, all are awful. I hope this is good because I like good things, but the Black Flag stanning has always been so strange to me.

@KeanuReaves people say that about every game with an anticipated release

@LikelySatan eh i liked it, but i also haven’t played it since 2014, so.. although i did like AC2 & 3 more

They still have to wait for the day one patch though right? Assuming there is one.

A month early is pretty wild.
Funny part is, at the same time I see people on Twitter asking if the game will be delayed again, as well as asking Ubi if the they'll be announcing the game going gold soon (which it clearly has long ago).

It is fun to see how stupid people are with showing off.

@AhmadSumadi couldn't have said it better. People rather run by their damn Reddit and X fuelled narrative rather than actually having an honest opinion.
I get it that many Ubisoft things felt samey, that's why I haven't played a single assassin's creed since the Ezio trilogy, but they've put in the effort to turn things around as of late.

It's like those salty bullies that would keep bashing on no man's sky or cyberpunk devs way after reparations were made with the twisted "they lied to us" narrative.

Do those gamers handle real life interactions the same way, holding on to petty grudges instead of looking forward and just having fun? Especially having fun on its own merits without the approval of whatever online bubble they move in.

Back on PS3 almost all the games I bought were coming from sources who broke the street date, often weeks in advance. I started to see a change with PS4 that made me wait, so many games needed day one patches to function correctly. This is especially true of PS5, I remember having Demon's Souls weeks early but it kept crashing and I couldn't play online. Games like Civ7 remind me to just wait like everyone else. It is possible to buy games and other media early even though it sounds dubious but day one patches make it not all that worth it.

I think the earliest PS5 game I had was that Demon's Souls remake copy, it clocked in about four weeks, fully in English with the correct box art. Most of the places that source those copies already bend international law, I remember having GTAV maybe two weeks early from the UAE, but it killed the hype because everyone else had a shared experience of going somewhere at midnight and picking it up, then staying up all night and playing it. Most of mine weren't coming from this side of Europe, but that said I've gotten some games early from UK high street retailers too, Fallout New Vegas being one of them, that was maybe two weeks early from a store (no longer there) who's staff knew they could make a premium on selling early to certain customers.

There's an assumption that a seller or retailer will get in trouble for it, if you talk to the people who work there they never do. It's more risky now because people do go to reddit/twitter to show those early copies, but it hasn't stop the supply. It's never just one factor that makes them available, it can be a fluctuating release date of simply printing those discs in a third world country. I haven't seen many services on the surface web who provide early copies but there are quite a few on the deepweb, some retailers go that route then sell early in their local territories. To most of us gaming and a spoiler free medium is sacred, to others it's just business.

With the rhetoric surrounding this one, I wouldn’t be surprised if some game shop employees with an agenda did this on purpose.

Customer reviews online before the inevitable 9/10 reviews from the gaming media isn’t ideal. We usually have to wait for the game to be out a month before we get the real review scores.

@Boxmonkey what do you consider a “real” review score?

@AhmadSumadi I prefer to take user scores from YouTubers and verified steam players than gaming media. It seems to me that the media are the only ones that get review codes these days because they give favourable scores. Games that have been universally disliked get 8/10 scores from places like ign and polygon.

Interesting. I guess the game must be pretty playable at this state seeng as it was only pushed for polish, presumably the delay was too late to stop some physical copies getting out.

Good to hear it seems decent, plus theres another whole month of polish incoming

Well thanks for the heads-up Push Square. Guess I gotta avoid YouTube like the plague for a while.

@breakneck Yeah I enjoyed Prince of Persia and The Crew 3. But I also bought AC Mirage, AC Valhalla, Skull and Bones, and Outlaws which were all huge disappointments and carbon copies of what they've done before with minimal effort. For me, AC Shadows is just too little too late. I just can't bring myself to do it anymore, especially considering the Guillemots have said they see no reason to change and will continue to do business as usual.

@Boxmonkey The chances of YouTubers giving positive impressions in exchange for access to games is far, far higher than legacy media. In fact, I’m fairly sure the DMCC bill that passed last year explicitly makes such a thing illegal for media based in the UK like this site. YouTube is the Wild West and far more narrative driven than sites with multiple writers and viewpoints. Let’s face it, you just want to find reviews that confirm your own biases and if the game’s decent then you won’t find that unless you hunt for them. Occam’s razor; if a game reviews in the 70s-80s like AC often does, it’s because they’re well-made games with mass appeal and decent amounts of content. It’s not a conspiracy.

@nessisonett Basically my response is would've been all of what you said! When I hear someone say "real" review scores they only mean scores that confirm their biases.

Reviewers who gave games like Veilguard an 8/9 out of 10 are the same who gave Stellar Blade an 8/9 out of 10. The only difference is the ones who explicitly love Stellar Blade will run with those scores and praise the reviewer. Those game people tend to hate Veilguard and say the same reviewer was paid to give it such a high score.

Also, notice how Stellar Blade, having an protag whose only existence is to serve as an action sex doll to players, has not been review-bombed by the folks who lament those character archetypes. However, I'll guarantee the moment Shadows becomes readily available for purchase, it'll have maybe hundreds of 0/10 reviews that don't reference the game itself. Just some issue they take with one of the main characters not being how they like their characters to be.

@nessisonett That's a great point. These days, I find Twitch to be a valuble resource for deciding on a purchase. There is the possibility of spoilers, but just seeing some basic gameplay and watching the player's reactions to the game itself are really helpful.

I wait patiently for the release date.

sony needs to lifetime ban people who play it early on ps5 !!!!

@AhmadSumadi I just look at several reviews. Here they also have a quite a different view what is good sometimes. Reviews in the end are opinions and that is fine its always interesting to read what people like.

@Richy2025 Why if you get it sold to you early then its not your problem.

Looking forward to this game! roll on March 20th!

Ubi responded to the leaked copies - “We are aware players have accessed Assassin’s Creed Shadows ahead of its official release. The development team is still working on patches to prepare the experience for launch and any footage shared online does not represent the final quality of the game.”