Black Flag Resynced Sold 2 Million Copies in a Day, and Its First Big Patch Lands July 16

We figured the Black Flag remake would do well, but not this well. Ubisoft confirmed that Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced sold 2 million copies in its first 24 hours, and Steam recorded a peak of 99,451 concurrent players, the highest the series has ever reached on that platform. The first week has not been smooth sailing for everyone, though, and the first patch is now set for July 16.

Video: Assassin's Creed on YouTube

What the July 16 patch fixes

The most visible problem sits on PC. Cutscenes are locked to 30 FPS whenever Raytracing, BVH or Terrain Quality is manually pushed to Ultra High, which is exactly the kind of setting owners of powerful rigs reach for first. Ubisoft says the July 16 update removes that cap, alongside a batch of other fixes and optimizations, with the full patch notes published just ahead of release.

Until then, the official workaround is simple: pick any pre-configured graphics preset instead of setting those three options to Ultra High yourself.

The patch has more to clean up beyond cutscenes. Ubisoft's known issues list includes a bug where upgrading the Jackdaw while docked can make the ship disappear, a whale tail slap you cannot dodge during the Harpooning activity, and a desynchronization screen you can get stuck on if you open and close the save menu too quickly. Ubisoft has been clear that not everything on the list will be fixed in a single update.

PC players also lost access to the game entirely for close to an hour over the launch weekend when a Ubisoft Connect outage blocked the DRM check required before offline play, a frustrating reminder that even a single-player pirate adventure currently depends on a server being awake.

A huge launch by the numbers

The numbers behind the launch are genuinely impressive. Beyond the 2 million copies and the Steam record, the remake sits at 85 on Open Critic and 84 on Metacritic, which makes it the highest rated Assassin's Creed since the original Black Flag in 2013. Ubisoft Singapore rebuilt the game on the latest Anvil engine for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Our take

A remake selling 2 million copies in a day tells us the appetite for Edward Kenway never went away, and by most accounts the game itself deserves the reception. But the 30 FPS cutscene lock and the Connect outage both landed on PC, the platform that set the concurrent player record, and that is not a great look for week one. If you have been holding off on PC, waiting for the July 16 patch notes before buying is the sensible move.