Main events from the weekend (May 18-19)

Ghost of Tsushima became the second Sony game in terms of online players on Steam, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is seeing strong pre-order activity, and Hay Day by Supercell returned to China after nearly four years—here's what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.

Hay Day

• On Sunday, the peak concurrent players of Ghost of Tsushima on Steam rose to 77,154 people, according to data from SteamDB. This is the second-highest result among games published by Sony on the platform, surpassed only by Helldivers 2, which attracted 458,709 players at its peak.
• According to insider Tom Henderson, the pre-order launch for Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been successful. He couldn’t obtain specific figures, but it seems Ubisoft is pleased with the number of pre-orders.
• Microsoft has decided to release the new part of Call of Duty in Game Pass alongside its traditional launch, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the situation. The newspaper notes that Microsoft hopes the Call of Duty release will attract new subscribers to Game Pass, ultimately increasing revenue. The new Call of Duty and its release in Game Pass are expected to be officially announced on June 9th at the Xbox Games Showcase presentation.
• The farming game Hay Day is once again available in the Chinese App Store, reports PocketGamer. The game had been absent for nearly four years. In July 2020, Hay Day was removed from the Chinese App Store, along with several thousand other titles, because it lacked an ISBN registration number from the local regulator, which is required for publishing games in China.