*Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced* hit a familiar PC problem over the weekend: when Ubisoft Connect went down, some players could not launch the game at all, even though the remake is meant to support offline play after authentication.
The outage reportedly lasted about an hour, but that was long enough for the PC version's reliance on Ubisoft Connect to become the latest flashpoint around Ubisoft's launcher and DRM layer. Players posted complaints on the game's Steam discussion board, while a Reddit thread about the lockout drew more than 15,000 upvotes, according to the report.
Ubisoft has not publicly addressed the outage on its main Assassin's Creed social channels. A separate post from the official account last week covered a PC cutscene frame-rate issue when using certain Ultra High settings, but not the Ubisoft Connect downtime.
Offline play still needed Ubisoft Connect to work
The problem is not that *Black Flag Resynced* has an online multiplayer mode that went unavailable. It is a single-player pirate remake. The frustration comes from PC players expecting offline access after the first activation step, only to find the game was still blocked while Ubisoft Connect was unavailable.
Ubisoft's own product information says a one-time internet connection is required to authenticate a copy of the game. In theory, that should let players continue offline until the game is reinstalled. On PC, however, Ubisoft Connect is more than a social overlay. It is also part of the access check between the player and the game.
That makes a short service outage feel larger than its running time. If the launcher cannot fall back cleanly to offline mode, players who bought a single-player game can still be stopped at the door by an account service they were not trying to use.
Another rough edge for a huge launch
The lockout lands during an otherwise massive opening week for Ubisoft's remake. *Black Flag Resynced* sold 2 million copies in its first day, and it has already given Ubisoft one of the strongest launches in *Assassin's Creed* history.
That success has come with visible PC friction. The remake also faced a Steam backlash over day-one cosmetic DLC and paid shortcut packs, although its user-review score later recovered from the initial hit. Earlier coverage of the launch also noted that the PS5 disc version needs an internet connection to install, making online checks a recurring topic around this release.
*Black Flag Resynced* is available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The game updates the 2013 original with rebuilt combat, improved stealth and parkour, enhanced naval systems, new story content and other additions, but this weekend's outage shows Ubisoft still has an old PC trust issue to solve.