Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced debuted to "Mostly Negative" reviews on Steam, here's why
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced launched to strong critic scores, nearly 100,000 players, and a “Mostly Negative” Steam rating. That contradiction says everything. Players aren’t mad at the game, they’re mad at Ubisoft’s $85 of day-one DLC, in-menu ads, and recent layoffs. Here’s the breakdown.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced just pulled off a rare and telling feat: launching as both a success and a disaster at the same time. The remake of the beloved 2013 pirate classic drew strong critic reviews and nearly 98,000 concurrent players on Steam, yet its user rating cratered to “Mostly Negative.”
That contradiction is the whole story. Players don’t hate the game, in fact, most of them love it. What they hate is what Ubisoft wrapped around it. Here’s what’s actually going on.
The good news: the remake itself is genuinely great
Buried under the outrage is an important fact: by most measures, Black Flag Resynced is a good remake. It holds an 84 on Metacritic, earned strong pre-release reviews, and drew a launch-day player count near 100,000, numbers most publishers would celebrate. Even many of the negative Steam reviews open by praising it, with lines like “brilliant remake” and “I love the game.”
The original Black Flag is widely considered one of the best Assassin’s Creed entries ever, and by most accounts, this remaster does right by Edward Kenway’s high-seas adventure with upgraded visuals and naval gameplay. The game, on its own, is not the problem.
The real problem: $85 of day-one DLC
The overwhelming reason for the negative reviews is Ubisoft’s launch-day monetization, which players have called excessive and, in a single-player game, insulting. On day one, the store featured nine separate DLC packs, priced at roughly $5 to $10 each, adding up to about $85 worth of extra content, none of which was included even in the $70 Deluxe Edition.
“What’s the point of getting the Deluxe version when, immediately in game, there’s $84.91 worth of ‘DLC’ that you don’t own?” read one widely-upvoted review. And while much of it is cosmetic, some packs reportedly include in-game shortcuts and gameplay advantages, not just costumes, which pushed the frustration from “annoying” to “predatory” for many players.
Adding insult: in-menu ads and deleted points
The DLC wasn’t the only monetization complaint. Players also reported that the game’s menus feature advertisements for another Ubisoft title, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, including prompts to “Launch Shadows to see stats for item.” Being advertised to, inside a $70 game you already bought, struck many as a step too far.
On top of that, some longtime Ubisoft players reported that their accumulated Ubisoft Connect (Uplay) points were wiped, and that certain bonus content and language packs were difficult to access through the launcher. Individually, minor. Together, they painted a picture of a launch that felt more focused on extracting money than respecting the player.
About that 30fps cutscene cap
One of the loudest early complaints, that cutscenes are locked to 30fps in 2026, comes with an important caveat. According to Ubisoft, it’s a bug, not a deliberate choice. The official Assassin’s Creed account acknowledged that cutscenes get capped at 30fps specifically when players manually set Raytracing, BVH, or Terrain Quality to “Ultra High,” and said a fix is “coming very soon,” with a settings workaround available in the meantime.
Players’ skepticism is understandable, Assassin’s Creed Shadows reportedly had the same issue and took a long time to patch. But as it stands, this is an acknowledged bug with a fix promised, not evidence that Ubisoft deliberately cheaped out on the presentation. It’s worth separating the genuine business grievances from a technical hiccup that’s already being addressed.
The part that actually stings: the layoffs
Hanging over the entire launch is a detail that makes the monetization feel especially cynical. Just last month, Ubisoft laid off 51 developers, including staff at studios that worked on Black Flag Resynced. So the sequence looks like this: a talented team makes a great remake, a chunk of them lose their jobs, and then the game ships stuffed with $85 of DLC and in-menu ads.
As one outlet put it, “the game is making money, DLC is being pushed out of the gates, and people are still losing their jobs.” For a lot of players, that’s the part that turns ordinary monetization fatigue into genuine anger. It’s hard to celebrate a company’s commercial “win” when the people who built it were shown the door right before payday.
Ubisoft’s messy launch: what it comes down to
Black Flag Resynced is a strange, revealing kind of launch: a genuinely good game buried under a “Mostly Negative” rating it mostly didn’t earn as a game. The remake is solid, the players are there, and the critics approve. But Ubisoft managed to overshadow its own success with $85 of day-one DLC, ads for another game inside a full-priced title, and the shadow of fresh layoffs.
It’s a near-perfect microcosm of modern Ubisoft: capable of making something people genuinely want, then undermining it with the exact business practices players keep begging them to stop. The talent is clearly there. The trust is what’s running out. And no amount of DLC packs can buy that back.
Somewhere under all that monetization is a great pirate game. Ubisoft just made it awfully hard to see.
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Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
Hat Tips:
Destructoid and Sportskeeda (July 9, 2026), verified for the reception split (Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced launching to an 84 Metacritic score, a Destructoid 9/10, and roughly 95,000-98,000 concurrent Steam players while sitting at “Mostly Negative” on Steam user reviews, and the nine day-one DLC packs at roughly $5-10 each totaling about $85, not included in the $70 Deluxe Edition, with some packs reportedly offering in-game advantages)
TheGamer and Steam user reviews (July 9, 2026), verified for the specific complaints (the $84.91 DLC figure, the in-menu advertisements prompting players to launch Assassin’s Creed Shadows, reports of wiped Ubisoft Connect points and launcher access issues, and negative reviews praising the remake itself while criticizing the monetization)
TwistedVoxel and the official Assassin’s Creed account (July 9, 2026), verified for the 30fps cutscene issue (Ubisoft acknowledging cutscenes lock to 30fps on PC when Raytracing, BVH, or Terrain Quality are set to Ultra High, describing it as a bug with a fix coming and a workaround available) and Destructoid for the context of Ubisoft laying off 51 developers, including staff at studios that worked on the remake, the previous month