Ubisoft's remake of its acclaimed 2013 pirate adventure, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, has launched to strong reviews and healthy sales, yet the release has been overshadowed by anger over its day-one paid add-ons. The game is a critical and commercial hit, but a wave of unhappy players has dragged its Steam user rating down to "Mostly Negative", turning what should have been a triumphant return into a debate about corporate practices.

The chief complaint is that Ubisoft is selling roughly $85 of downloadable content alongside the game at launch, none of which is bundled into the $70 Deluxe Edition. The nine DLC packs cost between $5 and $10 each and offer cosmetics as well as some in-game shortcuts. Discontent is sharpened by the fact that Ubisoft laid off a large number of developers who worked on the remake last month, across studios including Ubisoft Barcelona and Ubisoft Belgrade. On the technical side, players have also flagged cutscenes capped at 30 FPS, visual bugs and performance issues. For context, the game has around 100,000 Steam players, an 84 Metacritic rating and a 9 from Destructoid.