Ubisoft's live-service pirate sim Skull and Bones pulls into port on Steam this August

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Unless it gets delayed again. For old times' sake.

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(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Skull and Bones! Ubisoft's pirate sim wasn't great when I tried it: A hodge-podge of not particularly thrilling systems that were anyway obscured by all sorts of live-service stuff. Our Shaun Prescott scored it 68% in his Skull and Bones review, while Tyler Wilde found that it just made him really want to see what was going on in Sea of Thieves. Not glowing recommendations, in general.

And yet, to its credit, Ubisoft keeps trying. In the wake of a free week and the game's second season, the company has announced that Skull and Bones will finally be making the long voyage over to Steam, where it'll launch on August 22. The Steam page is live now, in case you'd like to go and marvel at it. 

It probably won't be enough to turn me into a die-hard Skull and Bones stan, but releasing on a platform I don't quietly resent having to launch every time I want to play a game on it surely won't hurt the game. Then again, you'll likely just be launching Ubisoft Connect from Steam.

If you're one of the scurvy dogs who was averaging over four hours of daily playtime in the game back in February, you can rest assured all your hard-won progress will carry over. In a follow-up tweet, Ubisoft told an interested punter that "Skull and Bones supports cross progress, and so your progress is saved on your Ubisoft Account." In short: So long as your Steam account is linked to the same Ubisoft account you've been playing on up to now, you can pick up right where you left off. After you buy the game again, anyway.

To be honest, I'm mostly keen to see what the user reviews look like. That might sound like I'm making fun, but the fact is that the game has been quietly chugging along since it came out five months ago. What are things like in there? In that forbidden kingdom of a live-service game that has surely shaken off all but its most dedicated players by now? Perhaps updates have made the game genuinely good, and it'll arrive on Steam to a glowing user rating.

Or perhaps not, and I'll be able to see just what's still irking people about the game here in its second season. Either one sounds interesting to me.

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Joshua Wolens
Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.