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Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced drops on July 9, and suddenly everyone remembers that Edward Kenway game was the best thing Ubisoft made in a decade. If the remake has you craving salt spray and cannon fire, here are seven pirate games to keep you busy while you wait, or long after.
Resynced rebuilds the 2013 classic on the newer Anvil Engine, with ray tracing, no loading screens between ship and shore, and reworked combat. The hype is real. But Black Flag also spoiled a lot of us, and the pirate genre is bigger and weirder than one Ubisoft open world. Some of these are grand sandboxes, some are chaotic multiplayer, one is a 2004 classic that still holds up. All of them let you raise a black flag and cause problems.
Table of Contents
The Best Pirate Games to Play in 2026
Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag
Might as well start with the source. The 2013 original is the one Resynced is remaking, and honestly it still plays great. Edward Kenway's Caribbean is stuffed with shanties, ship upgrades, naval battles, and that addictive loop of spotting a fat merchant vessel and deciding to ruin its day. If you want to see what all the fuss is about before the remake, the original is cheap and readily available.
Sea of Thieves
Release: 30 Apr 2024
Rare's shared-world pirate sandbox launched rough back in 2018 and slowly became one of the best hangout games around. It is at its finest with a crew of friends, hoisting sails, arguing over the map, and getting broadsided by strangers right as you reach the loot. It made the jump to more platforms in 2024 and 2025, so the player pool is healthy. Bring friends. Trust no one.
Skull and Bones
Ubisoft spent roughly eleven years and a small fortune getting Skull and Bones out the door in 2024, and the naval combat is genuinely the good part. Think Black Flag's ship battles pulled out into their own game, with proper progression and multiplayer waters. It stumbled at launch, sure, but ongoing seasons have steadily fleshed it out. Grab it on a discount and you will get your money's worth of broadsides.
Sid Meier's Pirates!
The 2004 remake of Sid Meier's 1987 classic is proof that pirate games peaked early and nobody noticed. It is a breezy sandbox where you trade, duel, romance governors' daughters, hunt for buried treasure, and slowly build a legend. It runs on a potato, costs next to nothing, and will happily eat an entire weekend before you look up. Ageless.
ATLAS
Release: 22 Dec 2018
From some of the folks behind ARK, ATLAS is the ambitious, janky, gigantic pirate MMO survival game. You build ships plank by plank, crew them, sail a massive world grid, and fight over islands with other players. It is messy and it is a grind, no lie, but nothing else on this list gives you the same "we built this galleon ourselves and now we are pirate kings" fantasy at scale.
Sea Dogs: To Each His Own
Release: 6 Dec 2012
This is the deep cut for the hardcore. A dense, unforgiving pirate RPG where you manage a crew, board enemy ships in real time, juggle a dozen nations' politics, and generally get out exactly what you put in. It is not the prettiest and it does not hold your hand, but if you want the pirate life simulated down to the ledger, this is it.
Blackwake
Release: 19 Feb 2020
Pure, glorious chaos. Blackwake crams dozens of players onto sailing ships and lets them scream at each other while loading cannons, patching hull breaches, and charging into melee on the enemy deck. Teamwork wins matches, and the comms are half the entertainment. It is older and quieter now, but few games nail the feeling of a full crew working a ship this well.
Play the Black Flag remake, absolutely, but do not stop there. Start with Sea of Thieves if you have got a crew, Sid Meier's Pirates! if you want a cozy solo sandbox, and ATLAS if you want to lose your mind building a fleet. Which pirate game got its hooks in you? Let us know in the comments.
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