Ubisoft Responds to AC Black Flag Resynced $85 DLC Backlash

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced has been one of the most anticipated remakes in years, and critics love it. Players, however, are a different story, and their frustration isn’t with the game itself. It’s with the $85 worth of DLC that Ubisoft stacked onto the store page on day one, right next to a $60 base price. The backlash hit hard enough that Ubisoft’s community team felt the need to respond publicly, and the response has only added fuel to the debate.

Base game price: $59.99 standard, $69.99 Deluxe Edition
Day-one DLC total: Approximately $85 across nine separate packs
Cost to own everything: Roughly $155 for the full package
Steam reviews at launch: Started at Mixed, has since climbed back to Mostly Positive
Ubisoft’s official response: All additional packs are optional and the base game is complete as-is
Steam peak: 99,451 concurrent players in the first 12 hours, beating previous AC records on Steam

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What Launched Alongside the Game

To understand why people are upset, it helps to know exactly what Ubisoft put up for sale on day one. The full DLC list alongside Black Flag Resynced at launch includes nine separate packs:

Master Assassin Character Pack ($10)
Master Assassin Naval Pack ($10)
Hellfire Character Pack ($10)
Hellfire Naval Pack ($10)
Sea Serpent Character Pack ($10)
Sea Serpent Naval Pack ($10)
Dragon Storm Character Pack ($10)
Dragon Storm Naval Pack ($10)
Map Pack ($5) – reveals all collectible locations on the in-game map

The character and naval packs are purely cosmetic, giving Edward Kenway and the Jackdaw alternate looks. The Map Pack is the one drawing the most heat specifically, since it’s essentially a pay-to-skip option for players who don’t want to hunt collectibles manually, which a lot of players consider a gameplay advantage rather than a cosmetic luxury.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag

What Ubisoft Said

As negative reviews started piling up on Steam, Ubisoft’s community team moved to address them directly. The response has been largely consistent across different reviews, emphasizing that the standard edition contains every mission, every island, the full story, and the complete world with nothing withheld. The additional packs are framed as entirely optional extras for players who want more, never a requirement to enjoy or complete the game.

It’s a measured and carefully worded response, but reading through the community’s reaction, it’s clear that most players weren’t claiming the DLC was required to finish the game. The frustration runs deeper than that.

Why Fans Are Still Angry Despite Ubisoft’s Response

The core of the backlash isn’t really about whether the DLC is mandatory. Players are upset about the principle of launching a full-priced remake of a 13-year-old game and immediately asking customers to spend more than the cost of the game again just to have everything on offer. When you buy the $69.99 Deluxe Edition and boot the game up to find $84.91 worth of content you don’t own staring you in the face from within the menus, it leaves a sour first impression regardless of whether any of it affects the story.

Fan reactions on Steam summed it up bluntly: several reviews noted feeling immediately shown everything they hadn’t paid for, with the Deluxe Edition buyers in particular feeling the sting hardest since they’d already paid a premium. The fact that the Map Pack blurs the line between cosmetic and gameplay-affecting content made things worse, since it directly shortens the discovery loop that’s a core part of the Black Flag experience.

The Ubisoft CEO Connection

This also isn’t the first time Ubisoft has taken heat for this exact kind of situation in recent memory. Following similar controversy around Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the Ubisoft CEO publicly suggested that microtransactions make games more fun, a statement that landed badly with a large portion of the community and has become something of a recurring reference point whenever a new Ubisoft game launches with a heavy DLC slate.

All Main Story Missions in Assassin s Creed Black Flag Resynced 2

The Bigger Picture: Why So Much DLC at Launch?

There’s a cynical but plausible explanation for the amount of DLC Ubisoft shipped alongside Black Flag Resynced on day one. Unlike a live-service game with ongoing seasonal content drops, a single-player remake has a finite commercial lifespan. Ubisoft knows that sales will be highest in the weeks following launch and will taper off quickly. Front-loading all potential monetization before that window closes is a straightforward business decision, even if it’s not a consumer-friendly one.

The timing is also relevant given that Ubisoft Barcelona, the studio behind the remake, was reportedly hit with significant layoffs and has been effectively disbanded following the game’s release. That context makes the heavy day-one DLC push feel even more uncomfortable for some players, since the studio that built the game no longer exists to support it going forward.

The Game Itself Is Getting Praised

Lost in the DLC noise is the fact that Black Flag Resynced has genuinely impressed critics. Reviewers have called out the remake for being faithful to the original while modernizing combat and visuals in meaningful ways. Steam’s overall rating has climbed back from Mixed toward Mostly Positive as more players clear the initial sticker shock and weigh in on the actual game. The concurrent player peak of nearly 100,000 in the first 12 hours also set a new Steam record for the Assassin’s Creed franchise, beating out both Shadows and Odyssey’s all-time highs.

So the situation is genuinely split: a strong game that fans of the original are enjoying, wrapped in a monetization structure that the same fans are frustrated by. Whether Ubisoft adjusts its approach based on the feedback or continues as-is heading into the next project remains to be seen.