Multiplayer Expansion for Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. Open Sea Survival Game. Session-based multiplayer deathmatch.Ubisoft Singapore's Skull and Bones has accomplished a lot over the past decade, but eight years of mismanagement have prevented developers past and present from launching Skull and Bones, Kotaku's A new report explains.

In this lengthy report, the developers state that the game never quite worked out what they really wanted it to be. Once planned as a simple multiplayer mode for "Black Flag," "Skull and Bones" morphed into an independent project.

Each time Skull and Bones changed course, months of work on design, setting, and art had to be rebuilt from scratch. Fundamental questions such as whether to play as individual pirates or as the ship itself surfaced again and again, and extra time was spent on prototypes that never left the ground.The version shown at E3 2018 and 2019 was a competitive, Division-style exploration zone with Shipbattler, but was ultimately scrapped.

"Every time they got feedback from Paris, they panicked and changed everything, changed the people working on it, and that happened a lot," one former developer told Kotaku.

This builds on recent reports condemning Ubisoft's abusive workplace culture and the ousting of Skull and Bones managing director Hugues Ricoeur from the studio. Developers describe managers who would rattle off projects with a complete change of direction, surround themselves with "yes men," and then turn a deaf ear to feedback from the developers themselves, before selling unreasonable expectations to their Parisian bosses

." The toxic culture that pervaded the Singapore studio is in no small part responsible for most of the production problems - reboots, rebrandings, and reboots - that have plagued Skull & Bones for a decade"

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Despite these problems, Ubisoft is determined to port "Skull & Bones." One current developer described the game as "too big to crush," likening it to the American banks in the 2008 crisis, and the former developer added that if other publishers had worked on "Skull & Bones," they "would have been crushed ten times already."

In a statement to Kotaku, Ubisoft explained that the current version of "Skull and Bones" has just passed alpha and is progressing well, but also noted that studio morale is suffering because of these reports. The publisher also reiterated that it has made changes to correct the toxic workplace culture, but according to France's Le Télégramme, many developers feel that nothing meaningful has changed since last year.

"The Skull & Bones team is proud of the work we have accomplished on the project since the last update, which just finished alpha production, and we look forward to sharing more details when the time comes. Nevertheless, unsubstantiated speculation about the game and the decisions that have been made will only serve to demoralize the team, which is working hard to develop an ambitious new franchise that will meet players' expectations.

Over the past year, we have made significant changes to our policies and processes to create a safer and more inclusive workplace and empower our team to create games that reflect the diversity of the world we live in.