Skull and Bones
Skull and Bones is an open world naval action RPG where ship combat, build choice, and sailing skill define your pirate legend. Conquer rival ships and mythical beasts in a vast ocean of up to 20 players.
Action AdventureAction RPGOpen WorldRole-PlayingSimulation
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- Released
- 2024
- Developer
- Ubisoft Kyiv
- Platforms
- 3 systems
- Critics
- Not scored
- Steam Deck
- verified
- Download
- 90 GB
What is Skull and Bones?
Skull and Bones is an open world naval action RPG where ship combat, build choice, and sailing skill define your pirate legend. Conquer rival ships and mythical beasts in a vast ocean of up to 20 players.
Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.
The record
| First released | 16 February 2024 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Ubisoft Kyiv, Ubisoft Chengdu, Ubisoft Paris |
| Publisher | Not recorded |
| Platforms | PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Steam Deck |
| Genres | Action Adventure, Action RPG, Open World, Role-Playing, Simulation |
| Languages | 14 supported |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata Q30253211, seeded 30 August 2026. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.
How was Skull and Bones received?
Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.
Accessibility
Seeing
None declared
Hearing
None declared
Input
- Full controller support
Difficulty
None declared
Method. Features the publisher declared on its own store page. A declaration is a floor, not a review.
What does it support?
| Capability | Support |
|---|---|
| Controller | full support |
| Cloud saves | No |
| Cross-platform play | No |
| Mod support | No official workshop |
| Online play | Yes |
| In-game purchases | Yes |
| Steam Deck | verified |
| Download size | 90 GB |
| Add-on content | 4 DLC listed |
| Age gate | 17+ |
Content descriptors
- Frequent violence or gore
- General mature content
Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.
What does it cost?
Steam price in US dollars, read 30 August 2026. Prices move hourly and vary by region. Check the current price.
Is Skull and Bones worth it?
66% of 4,878 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Mixed. It costs $2.99 on Steam, on sale from $29.99.
That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. Players do report problems — see the reported-problems section below before buying. We have not published our own review of this game.
How long is Skull and Bones? How long to beat it
Total play time for Skull and Bones is about 68.5 hours to do everything, and around 27.4 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 27.4h | 10 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 44.8h | 7 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 68.5h | 2 |
At its current price of $2.99, beating the main story works out to about $0.11 per hour. That is the price divided by the hours, a value read and not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being the better game.
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
Where Skull and Bones sits on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueSkull and Bones plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.
1 games have both
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- Multi-platform
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
Estimated sales for Skull and Bones
These are estimates, not reported figures. Ubisoft Kyiv has not published unit sales for Skull and Bones, and nobody outside the company can measure them. What follows is arithmetic on the review count, with the method printed below so you can check it or reject it.
How this was calculated
Steam sales track review counts closely enough that dividing one by the other across games with published figures gives a usable multiplier. This is the standard method for estimating sales from outside a publisher.
| Reviews on Steam | 4,878 |
|---|---|
| Sales per review | 30 to 60 |
| List price | $29.99 |
| Assumed average selling price | 33% to 66% of list |
What this cannot tell you
Steam only. Console, Epic, GOG and retail sales are not in here. For a game that sold heavily on PlayStation this is a fraction of the real number.
The band is wide because the method is imprecise. Review rates vary with price, genre, launch era and how insistently a game asks. Published analyses put the ratio between 30 and 60 for paid games, and we show the whole range rather than picking a point in it.
The owner estimate above measures something else. SteamSpy counts accounts that have the game, which includes free weekends, bundles, giveaways and gifts. It sits higher than a sales figure for that reason, and the two are not alternative answers to the same question.
Revenue is the shakiest line. It assumes an average selling price well below list because most copies move in sales, and it ignores regional pricing, refunds, key resellers and whatever deal the publisher actually has with Valve. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a figure.
If Ubisoft Kyiv publishes a real number we will use that instead and say where it came from. Our editorial policy covers how we handle figures we cannot verify.
Skull and Bones price & deals: is it on sale?
We have one reading so far: $2.99 on 30 August 2026. Prices are checked daily from here, and this becomes a chart once there is more than one point to join. A single observation is a price, not a history.
Latest Skull and Bones updates & patch notes
Pulled from Skull and Bones's own Steam feed on 5 September 2026. Posts marked as from the studio were written by the developer; the rest are articles Steam syndicated from elsewhere. Every one links to its source.
What readers say about Skull and Bones
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
Loading reviews…
Problems players report
We read the 300 most recent negative Steam reviews of Skull and Bones on 30 August 2026 and counted what they mention. These are complaints, not confirmed defects: we have not reproduced any of them, and a review describes one person's machine. What the counts tell you is which problems more than one person ran into.
- Monetisation inside the game13 of 300 (4%)
Don't even get me started on the microtransactions.
Steam review, 1 April 2026 · 8 hours played · 132 readers marked it helpfulIt also has a LOT of microtransactions, so I bailed very early.
Steam review, 26 August 2026 · 1 hours played · 5 readers marked it helpful - Crashes and freezes11 of 300 (4%)
Whether it's Ubisoft Connect crashing and needing to be reinstalled, a game patch being applied, or Ubisoft Connect itself updating, the game sometimes ends up back in the same splash-screen loop.
Steam review, 31 July 2026 · 4 hours played · 57 readers marked it helpful[b]This $850 million project simply crashes at startup.[/b] The same thing happened with the trial version.
Steam review, 24 May 2026 · 0 hours played · 5 readers marked it helpful - Will not launch or install9 of 300 (3%)
So apparently, my new Skull & Bones troubleshooting technique is: Game won't launch?
Steam review, 31 July 2026 · 4 hours played · 57 readers marked it helpfulSeriously, you can not genuinely tell me this is a fully-released game from a massive developer like Ubisoft, and the game doesn't even launch properly.
Steam review, 28 October 2025 · 59 hours played · 3 readers marked it helpful - Servers and connection9 of 300 (3%)
but their server is having a problem and made all the gold coin i purchased just vanish suddenly after trying to exchange for smuggler point.
Steam review, 30 October 2025 · 67 hours played · 134 readers marked it helpfulThere are moments that destroy the gameplay, the incentive to go anywhere and do anything is quickly gone, facing insane lags (I've got 1000/1000 direct fiber) dumb disconnects, like, check this: "The Host has left the Server" ...
Steam review, 22 July 2026 · 3 hours played · 3 readers marked it helpful
A further 11 reviews call the game buggy or broken without saying how, which is why they are counted separately rather than assigned to a theme. Counted by keyword across review text, so a review discussing two problems is counted under both. Read the reviews yourself.
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Where Skull and Bones appears
The ranked lists and finder pages Skull and Bones qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
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Games like Skull and Bones
24 games overlap with Skull and Bones on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Day of Dragons and God of War.
Skull and Bones head to head
See Skull and Bones compared side by side, on score, price, specs and more:
Common questions about Skull and Bones
What platforms is Skull and Bones on?
Skull and Bones is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Steam Deck. It first released in 2024.
How much does Skull and Bones cost?
$2.99 on Steam in the United States, read on 30 August 2026. Prices move often and vary by region, so check the store before buying.
Do players recommend Skull and Bones?
66% of 4,878 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Mixed. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.
Does Skull and Bones work on Steam Deck?
Valve rates Skull and Bones as verified on the Steam Deck, from its own testing. That means it works out of the box with no configuration.
How big is the Skull and Bones download?
90 GB on PC, from the storage requirement on its Steam listing. Console versions differ.
Who made Skull and Bones?
Skull and Bones was developed by Ubisoft Kyiv, Ubisoft Chengdu, Ubisoft Paris.
Is Skull and Bones worth it in 2026?
66% of 4,878 Steam reviews are positive (Mixed), and it is $2.99 on steam. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.
Is Skull and Bones on sale?
Yes, right now. Skull and Bones is $2.99 on Steam, down from its $29.99 list price (about 90% off), read on 30 August 2026. Prices move, so check the store.
How long does it take to beat Skull and Bones?
about 27.4 hours for the main story, 44.8 hours with the main extras, 68.5 hours to complete everything, from HowLongToBeat's player-submitted times. These are community medians, so your own run may be shorter or longer.
Is Skull and Bones worth the money?
At $2.99 for about 27.4 hours to beat the main story, Skull and Bones works out to roughly $0.11 per hour. That is a value read, not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being better. Weigh it against the review sentiment above.