Ubisoft cannot catch a break on this one.

As the saying goes, "when it rains it pours," and that certainly seems to be true for Ubisoft. With its release still a month out, it is being reported that physical copies of Assassin's Creed Shadows are already out in the wild. Some of those with physical copies are already sharing photos of their copies on social media.

This also means that gameplay footage and story elements are also being shared on the Internet already. For those who value not being spoiled, be sure to be careful when doom scrolling your preferred social media over the next several weeks. Ubisoft is doing what they can to pull all clips and gameplay from the Internet, but we all know that it's impossible for them to stop all of the leaks.

One Reddit user says that the leaked version is an "old build." They say it very clearly lacks several of the improvements that Ubisoft talked about when the game was pushed out of 2024. This suggests that the version available on these physical discs is using a build of the game that is several months old and lacks any sort of pre-release patch that will almost assuredly be available come the actual release date in late March. Get ready for a slew of videos to pop up from engagement farmers and grifters telling you about how broken the game is or how it lacks X or Y features because of this old build surfacing.

In response to this early release, Ubisoft issued a statement to fans through their socials.

This is just the latest bump in the road for Ubisoft and Assassin's Creed Shadows. The company has had to deal with racists right from the start because of the game's inclusion of the black samurai Yasuke. Then there was drama over the accuracy of certain elements in various promotional materials, including the use of a historical reenactment flag in a piece of artwork. Shadows was initially set to release in November 2024 before being delayed to February 14, 2025. It was then delayed again to March 20, 2025.