Assassin’s Creed Shadows Developers Are “Actively Looking At” Ways to Bring Harder Difficulty Options

The creative director for Assassin’s Creed Shadows has indicated that players want ways to further increase the game’s difficulty.

With a little over a week having passed since the release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, creative director Jonathan Dumont has revealed that the game’s development team is looking into ways to offer players more challenging experiences. Speaking to GamesRadar at GDC 2025, Dumont said that player feedback about wanting harder difficulty options isn’t falling on deaf ears.

According to Dumont, the team working on updates for Assassin’s Creed Shadows is “always listening and monitoring what players are doing,” in order to bring out timely bug fixes and other potential features down the line.

Dumont also spoke about how the studio is “actively looking at” ways at “making even a tougher difficulty for some of our players.” While he didn’t go into detail about what this harder difficulty would entail, it would be an interesting exercise, considering the hybrid mix of RPG and stealth gameplay that Assassin’s Creed Shadows provides.

“How challenging do you want it,” asked Dumont. “But we’re looking at these things and monitoring what people say about the game.”

He also spoke the variety in feedback that Ubisoft has been getting for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and how the development team can’t take every suggestion into account for future updates.

“Obviously, we can’t do everything, but there are things that we’re going to be actioning on, and just for the next updates, there are quite a bit of bug fixes and little feature enhancement stuff that is coming in,” said Dumont. “I can’t just make a list. There’s quite a bit of it. So the team is always working to improve the game, and hopefully, people will be able to see the difference when they’re playing Shadows in the upcoming months.”

Assassin’s Creed Shadows hit PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on March 20. Leading up to its release, however, there was quite a bit of uncertainty about the game because of its release date getting constantly delayed. In another interview, Dumont revealed that the development team actually used the delays to further polish up Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

“Not really,” responded Dumont when asked if the reception of Star Wars Outlaws had anything to do with the game’s myriad delays. “We were basically trying to make the most polished game that we [can].” He went on to say that the delays were because, “our game was there, so just making sure that we don’t have bugs and that the experience is clean for people.”

Dumont also spoke about a few additions the team was able to make to Assassin’s Creed Shadows thanks to its delays, including additional character moments that further help develop relationships. “It’s kind of cool also that we were close to launch, and then we get this extra time to do the things that typically you’re doing at the end,” he said.

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