The Ubisoft Forward showcase on Sunday focused on the publisher's most popular (and profitable) titles: "Assassin's Creed," "Watch Dogs," "Ghost Recon," and "Far Cry dominated the E3-style presentations. A notable absence was the open-world pirate adventure Skull & Bones, first announced in 2017 and originally slated for a 2018 release but subsequently postponed multiple times.

According to the VGC report, there's a reason for that: according to an anonymous developer source who spoke to VGC, the game has shifted from Ubisoft's usual "premium box model" (think basically every other open world Ubisoft game) to a live service model (think Fortnite), according to the report.

The report distinguishes what Skull & Bones will be like from, say, The Division 2; Fortnite's ever-evolving "live storytelling" format is a reference. There is a strong focus on community elements and world events are triggered by player involvement. The live model suggests that the game will be free to basic play, but the report does not specify how the game will be priced.

The leadership of the game has also reportedly changed, with former editorial vice president Elizabeth Peren taking over as creative director. The official Skull & Bones Twitter account has remained silent since last May, when the previous postponement was announced.

It is difficult to determine how much of what we saw in previous builds of the game will remain: the game has (and had) a single-player "narrative campaign" and when Tim played it in 2017, he played "Assassin's Creed: Black Flag" wrote that it felt as much like "Burnout" as "Assassin's Creed: Black Flag.