Assassin’s Creed Shadows brought in a million players on its first day, but it’s weird that Ubisoft isn’t sharing sales numbers

Assassin’s Creed Shadows may be about to signal a rebound for publisher Ubisoft. The company announced that the action RPG has had over 1 million players in its first 24 hours on sale.

This is obviously pretty good for any game, but the real news here is that those aren’t actual sales figures, which is a little concerning.

Assassin’s Creed games always do well for Ubisoft, so there was little worry that Shadows wouldn’t also deliver. Much of the pre-launch doom and gloom about the publisher’s future was warranted, however – and the constant delays certainly didn’t help.

But here we are, one day after release, and we have a sign of life. Ubisoft announced in a Tweet Thursday that Shadows has passed 1 million players. This milestone was reached just on its first day on sale, and likely includes all platforms.

Ubisoft has yet to reveal hard sales numbers, either shipped or sold. In fairness, the publisher doesn’t typically do that; it’s more concerned with active player numbers, as all the modern Assassin’s Creed games incorporate many live service elements that rely on player retention, and not necessarily the initial sales bump.

Over on Steam, the game’s performance has been, well, fine, though nothing particularly special. Shadows currently sits at the top of Steam’s top sellers for its third week running. After launch, the game peaked at 41,412 concurrent players (via SteamDB).

If you’ve been keeping up with the performance of other major Steam releases in 2025, 41,000 will no doubt look small compared to Monster Hunter Wilds’ 1.3 million concurrent, or Kingdom Come Deliverance 2’s 256,000 series record. As positive word of mouth continues to spread, however, Shadows’ player base will surely grow over the weekend.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that, because Ubisoft spent several years not publishing its games – including Assassin’s Creed – on Steam, its audience is a little more fragmented on PC. We’ll find out when the dust settles. If you haven’t decided yet whether you want to jump into Assassin’s Creed’s interpretation of Feudal Japan, maybe our five star Shadows review will help.