Black Flag Resynced blows every other Assassin's Creed - and very nearly The Witcher 3 - out of the Steam waters

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has made quite a splash on Steam since its launch earlier this week, registering a series-high concurrent player count and even coming close to some titans of the gaming sphere like The Witcher 3.

Launching on July 9, Black Flag Resynced drew in a very respectable 99,451 concurrent players according to SteamDB, which is by far the highest for any Assassin's Creed entry to date. Odyssey only managed around a 62k peak, with Shadows pipping that slightly with a 64k peak - I thought Valhalla would have run these pretty close, but it hasn't managed to break 20k at all in the years since release.

I started looking into how significant a near-100k player count was by comparing it with other legendary single-player games in the same vein. The Witcher 3 beats Black Flag Resynced, but not by much. It managed 103k players just after the release of The Witcher TV show, with the siren call of Henry Cavill drawing a batch of fresh players in, or perhaps pushing some old heads off the Witcher wagon.

I wandered into Skyrim territory, where the big boys live. Bethesda's open-world behemoth is a slightly different flavour of single-player action, but I feel like there's some overlap in the player base, since everyone on the planet owns at least 2 versions. OG Skyrim popped off at launch with a near-300k peak, but soon dropped to sub-Black Flag levels. Since we haven't even had a full weekend with Edward Kenway yet, let's see how he fares.

I think extra credit should be given to Black Flag Resynced; it's kept players at their desks despite it being hotter than the sun right now. I reviewed Resynced and thought it was a great time, fully deserving of the Steam masses jumping on to sink the Spanish and plunder to their hearts' content.