It’s no secret that Ubisoft has a lot riding on the performance of its recently released Assassin’s Creed Shadows, especially after a string of sales mishaps from past titles. Fortunately, the game seems to already be a win for the studio, amassing over one million players less than 24 hours after launch.
As reported by the official Assassin’s Creed X\Twitter page, the title surpassed the milestone within its 20 March launch day, with the number likely to grow even further as it approaches the weekend, when more potential players would have the time to pick up and play the game.
It's not even 4PM here in Canada and Assassin's Creed Shadows has already passed 1 million players!
— Assassin's Creed (@assassinscreed) March 20, 2025
Thank YOU from the bottom of our hearts for joining this adventure in Feudal Japan. We are beyond excited to start this journey with you! 💝 pic.twitter.com/1cqwABrQfN
One thing to note here is that these stats only cover player numbers and not actual sales. With the game also being available at no additional cost for those with a Ubisoft+ subscription, it’s safe to assume that the total reported players also includes such individuals who did not pay full price for the game.
Still, the actual sales figures seem to already be rather impressive when considering other currently available data such as Steam’s concurrent player counts, which saw an all-time peak of 41,412 players over its launch day, with 25,679 concurrent players at the time of writing. These figures already far surpass those of its best-performing predecessor on the platform, 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which saw an all-time peak of 15,679 players in 2023.
With these record-breaking statistics for the franchise on just one platform, this already marks a good sign for the game’s actual sales figures after considering the other portion of its player base, which spans not only across consoles but also other PC players who purchased the game via the Ubisoft Connect platform.
These figures are sure to be a major boon to Ubisoft, with the studio in desperate need of a win after not only the poor performance of last year’s Star Wars Outlaws but also the discontinuation of its multiplayer shooter XDefiant and the layoffs that followed, culminating in the studio’s shareholders considering a possible buyout with companies like Tencent. Let’s hope the strong performance of Assassin’s Creed Shadows convinces the studio of just how beloved the IP is, and that it’s one worth fighting for.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
