Skull & Bones gets a rating, might finally come out

Yo ho mateys — Skull & Bones is on the horizon

When Skull & Bones showed up to E3 2017 with a bombastic cinematic trailer for a new game that featured pirates swashbuckling on the Indian Ocean, gamers were understandably pumped. We’ve had some pretty awesome pirate games over the years, like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Sea of Thieves, and of course the classic Monkey Island series. Players were ready for Skull & Bones to join those ranks, because it looks like it would be yet another unforgettable adventure on the high seas. That is, if it ever comes out.

The next year at E3, thankfully, we got another story trailer and a gameplay trailer, so there were no signs of any turbulent waters yet. As time went on, though, the game fell into the whirlpool that is game development — the studio behind Skull & Bones, Ubisoft Singapore, went through some pretty significant changes throughout the course of making the game, which included a few delays and other development problems here and there. In 2020, the studio shifted towards a live-service approach for the title. Finally, a video in April gave us a good look at some of Skull & Bones’ gameplay systems, revitalizing our hope one more time.

The newest update on the game is that ratings have started coming in — specifically, one from the Game Rating and Administration Committee from South Korea, as was noticed by Twitter user @the_marmolade and reported by the Video Games Chronicle.

So it’s not exactly a huge update by any means, but it does mean that the game is one step closer to getting its full release. While the ESRB doesn’t have a listing for the game yet, apparently it’s common for the Korean committee to release its ratings first, for a reason unbeknownst to us.

This is excellent news for the fans who’ve stuck around long enough to even remember this game, because Skull & Bones is finally supposed to release sometime next year. As a big fan of pirates myself, this is one I’ve tentatively kept an eye on over the years after I first saw it at E3 in 2018, and I for one will be looking forward to joining the adventure on the high seas…whenever I can.