Ubisoft boldly claimed that Skull and Bones (remember Skull and Bones?) would be the industry’s first quadruple-A game. Things didn’t really pan out for its maligned pirate game, but that doesn’t appear to have deterred the studio from trying to make quad-A happen.
That’s according to the, since edited, LinkedIn page of Ubisoft producer, Krasimira Yakovlieva. As spotted by Tech4Gamers, and shared far and wide on social media, hence the profile tweaking, Yakovlieva says she has “13+ years of experience across AAAA development”.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows And Mirage Are Quad-A Games, Apparently
More notably, the Ubisoft producer calls two of the studio’s quad-A games out by name, referring to her work on Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Yakovlieva refers to the former as “the first next-gen AAAA title to launch natively on macOS”, while Mirage is described as “the first AAAA title released natively on iPhone and iPad”.
In Yakovlieva’s defense, the backlash to Ubisoft’s continued insistence on the use of the term quad-A might not have been quite as fierce if Shadows were the only Assassin’s Creed game to have been given that label. Shadows was well-received and, at one point in 2025, was leading the pack for best-selling new releases. It’s Mirage getting the quad-A treatment that has really got people rolling their eyes.
Is A Good Enough Assassin’s Creed Good Enough?
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is under major pressure, but is the series equipped to handle that?
Although Mirage wasn’t necessarily a bad game by any means, the hopes that it might be a return to the more compact Assassin’s Creed games of old didn’t really pan out. It was less a compact entry in the series and more a transparent attempt at trying to turn what was clearly supposed to be an extension of Valhalla into its own spinoff.
There’s No Need For The Term Quad-A To Exist
More than anything, people just seem surprised that Ubisoft has the gall to try and claim it’s making quad-A games after it promised for a decade that Skull and Bones would be the first of its kind. It’s also a reminder that terms like quad-A don’t need to exist. All games from big-budget studios like Ubisoft, EA, and Activision can simply fall under the triple-A umbrella. As soon as you start trying to come up with a term that makes your games sound like they’re supposed to be better than everything else, you add an unnecessary layer of pressure to the developers creating the game and how well those games then need to perform commercially.
Yakovlieva’s immediate scrubbing of Assassin’s Creed quad-A labels as soon as screenshots of her profile started to do the rounds on social media suggests that the term was never something meant for public consumption in a post-Skull and Bones world. It’s probably a term used internally by Ubisoft to set certain games apart from others, most notably Assassin’s Creed games, which almost certainly take precedent over everything else, particularly after the success of Shadows.
- Released
-
March 20, 2025
- ESRB
-
Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language
- Developer(s)
-
Ubisoft Quebec
