Assassin's Creed Shadows reaches 2 million players, outpacing several prior games in the franchise

Assassin's Creed Shadows has already reached 2 million players, beating out Origins and Odyssey but not Valhalla.

Ubisoft's latest historical role-playing game Assassin's Creed Shadows has already reached 2 million players.

Ubisoft confirmed the milestone in a post on Instagram, adding that Assassin's Creed Shadows had "surpassed the launches" of 2017's Assassin's Creed Origins and 2018's Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

Ubisoft is almost certainly using the phrase players as it's including anyone jumping in through the publisher's Ubisoft+ subscription service, in addition to anyone outright buying the game.

The choice of wording also seems to imply that Assassin's Creed Shadows has not overtaken the launch number for 2020's Assassin's Creed Vahalla, the prior mainline entry in the series.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla had a gargantuan launch and sustained sales, with Ubisoft saying at the time that it was the biggest launch of the entire franchise.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is a critical game for Ubisoft

While we don't have exact sales for every single Assassin's Creed game week-by-week, we do have enough prior milestones and PR statements to safely guess that Assassin's Creed Shadows is firmly the second-most successful game in the series so far.

Naturally, that could change in either direction as time goes on and depending on what post-launch support looks like. The game's success is critical for Ubisoft, as the embattled publisher has faced dozens of game cancellations and delays over the last few years.