Assassin’s Creed Shadows is delayed again, and fans are comparing it to one infamous game launch

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Assassin’s Creed Shadows is delayed. Fans that were expecting to dig into the AC franchise’s first foray into Japan will have to wait a bit longer.

This is the second delay to the game since last fall, when it was originally supposed to launch. That delay extended the waiting period to February, but the new release date for the game is now set for March 20. In an announcement post, Ubisoft said that the studio “believed a few additional weeks are needed to implement [community] feedback and ensure an even more ambitious and engaging day-one experience.”

That translates to a delay of about a month from the Feb. 14 date that the game was given when it was originally delayed last year. It’s not a terribly long time to wait, in the grand scheme of things, but the repeated delays do have many fans nervous about the state Shadows will release in.

Notably, there are plenty of players on X/Twitter replying to Ubisoft’s announcement by invoking a game launch sure to give people the shivers: Cyberpunk 2077.

Cyberpunk 2077 infamously released in such a half-baked state that the PlayStation store removed it from its offerings, as the game was just about unplayable for many players on PS4 and Xbox One due to bugs and glitches. PC players had a slightly better time of it, but complained the game still didn’t feel like it delivered on nearly as many things as CD Projekt has promised, even if people overlooked all the bugs.

Of course, now the game is a huge success story, given how The Phantom Liberty DLC and other updates turned Cyberpunk into the type of deep RPG experience people were expecting from the makers of The Witcher 3. But anyone who tried to play in those early days after launch will tell you—it wasn’t pretty.

Fan trepidation for a second delay to Shadows is understandable, and the fear that Shadows will end up “like cyberpunk, multiple delays just to release something that was very obviously not done,” as one fan said, is a real one. That game is still so well-known for its bungled release that multiple fans referenced it in the same breath as Shadows. However, another contingent of people have pointed out the consistency with which Ubisoft has noted it’s taking time to address player concerns and have been willing to delay the game to get things right—something that hasn’t always happened with the rigid release schedule of Assassin’s Creed games in the past.

Regardless, we’ll be ready to sneak and stab our way across Japan when the newest Assassin’s Creed title does finally emerge from the shadows on March 20.