Ubisoft partnered with Oceana and agency Biborg to launch Waves of Change inside Skull and Bones, raising €300,000 for marine conservation through in-game play.
ARCHIVEUbisoft and Oceana Turn Skull and Bones Into an Ocean Conservation Campaign
Waves of Change is a charitable in-game campaign produced by Ubisoft and conservation organisation Oceana, executed by French gaming creative agency Biborg, that ran from March 18 to March 31, 2024, inside the pirate action game Skull and Bones, challenging players to defeat designated enemies to trigger real-world donations toward a €300,000 fundraising goal for marine ecosystem preservation.
Ubisoft launched Skull and Bones on February 16, 2024, according to News Ubisoft. Within weeks of that release, the Waves of Change event activated inside the game, inviting players navigating the Indian Ocean to defeat specific enemy types — Skirmishers, Headhunters, and the named adversary Philippe La Peste — with each defeat contributing to Ubisoft's donation commitment to Oceana, as documented by biborg.com. The mechanic transformed the game's existing combat loop into a public utility, making environmental action a byproduct of ordinary gameplay rather than an interruption of it.
The campaign sits within Ubisoft's broader Play Green environmental platform, formalised in June 2021, per news.ubisoft.com, and reflects the company's standing as a founding member of the Playing for the Planet Alliance, supported by the United Nations Environment Programme. Biborg was selected to lead the creative and campaign execution following a competitive pitch, according to biborg.com. The agency, which had maintained a working relationship with Ubisoft spanning twelve years prior to this project, as noted by Cyrian Thomas, Lead Account Director at Biborg, per biborg.com, developed the full communication suite: visual identity, a promotional film, a dedicated landing page, content creator engagement mechanics, and social network content. Jonathan Bendel, Senior Worldwide Creator Campaigns Manager at Ubisoft, described the effort as the result of close collaboration involving more than fifty partners drawn from twelve different internal Ubisoft teams, per biborg.com. Waves of Change earned a Clapboard Score of 78 out of 100, recognising the structural coherence of its cause-led mechanic and the scale of its creator mobilisation.
ARCHIVEUbisoft identified the Skull and Bones player community as a credible vehicle for ocean conservation messaging. The game's setting — pirate navigation across the Indian Ocean — gave the Waves of Change campaign an organic thematic anchor, linking the fiction of maritime adventure to the factual urgency of marine ecosystem loss without requiring players to step outside the game's established world.
The global games market was estimated at approximately $187.7 billion in 2024, growing roughly 2.1 percent year over year, according to Newzoo. That scale reflects an audience that competing publishers, including Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard, also address through live-service events and seasonal in-game content. What distinguished Waves of Change from comparable activations was the direct donation mechanic: player behaviour generated charitable output in real time, creating a feedback loop between entertainment and impact that purely cosmetic or awareness-led campaigns do not produce.
Oceana's institutional credibility reinforced the campaign's legitimacy. As the world's foremost international ocean conservation organisation, per news.ubisoft.com, Oceana provided the cause authority that Ubisoft's gaming context required to avoid scepticism around corporate environmental messaging. The Playing for the Planet Alliance, under the United Nations Environment Programme, supplied a third layer of external validation, situating the campaign within a recognised framework of industry environmental accountability rather than presenting it as a standalone brand gesture. Ubisoft's Play Green platform, which combines carbon reduction commitments with games-based environmental advocacy, gave Waves of Change a documented lineage rather than the appearance of an opportunistic one-off, strengthening audience trust in the campaign's sincerity and sustaining engagement across the event's thirteen-day window.
Biborg built the Waves of Change creative suite to function across multiple surfaces simultaneously. The agency developed a unified visual identity that connected Skull and Bones' existing aesthetic to Oceana's conservation mission, ensuring that campaign materials read as native to the game's world rather than as external charity overlays, per biborg.com. That coherence between game fiction and real-world cause was, according to biborg.com, central to the concept Biborg proposed during the competitive pitch that secured the brief.
The promotional film served as the campaign's primary narrative device, establishing the emotional logic of the donation mechanic for audiences who encountered the campaign outside the game itself. A dedicated landing page consolidated the campaign's purpose, participation instructions, and progress communication for players and content creators alike. The creator engagement mechanics were engineered to scale community participation beyond Ubisoft's owned channels. According to biborg.com, more than 600 content creators participated in the operation, a figure that reflects deliberate seeding strategy rather than organic discovery. Jonathan Bendel, Senior Worldwide Creator Campaigns Manager at Ubisoft, credited Biborg with crafting what he described as a truly memorable campaign, per biborg.com, and noted that the coordination required more than fifty partners across twelve internal Ubisoft teams — a logistical scope that demanded the agency function as an integration layer between creative output and organisational execution.
The social content strategy extended the campaign's reach across platforms where Skull and Bones' player community was already active, amplifying the donation mechanic's visibility without separating it from the game context that gave it meaning. Production credits for all individual craft roles on the Waves of Change campaign beyond the named agency and client contacts are not publicly documented in available sources.
Waves of Change achieved its stated fundraising objective. The campaign reached its €300,000 donation target for Oceana across the March 18 to March 31, 2024, event window, according to biborg.com. That outcome confirms the donation mechanic functioned at the scale Ubisoft and Biborg designed it to reach, validating the decision to tie charitable output directly to player combat activity rather than to purchasing behaviour or voluntary contribution.
More than 600 content creators participated in the campaign operation, per biborg.com, representing a creator mobilisation that meaningfully extended the campaign's reach beyond Ubisoft's owned platforms. Ubisoft observed an increase in daily average users during the event period, according to biborg.com, though no specific percentage, absolute figure, or comparative baseline has been published, preventing precise quantification of the audience lift the campaign generated.
No media budget, production budget, or paid-media spend for Waves of Change is reported in any available source. The absence of spend data makes return-on-investment analysis against industry benchmarks impossible. What the available metrics do demonstrate is structural effectiveness: a clearly defined fundraising target was met, creator participation at scale was achieved, and player engagement showed a directional increase during the event. The campaign's cause-led architecture — embedding charitable output within the game's core loop rather than adjacent to it — produced measurable real-world impact within a thirteen-day window, a duration that most live-service events do not use to generate external philanthropic results. The Clapboard Score of 78 out of 100 reflects the campaign's demonstrated ability to convert game mechanics into verified conservation funding while sustaining player and creator engagement at meaningful scale.
Waves of Change is a charitable in-game event that ran inside Skull and Bones from March 18 to March 31, 2024. Players defeated designated enemies to trigger Ubisoft donations to Oceana, with a goal of raising €300,000 for marine ecosystem preservation. The campaign was created by French agency Biborg.
The Waves of Change campaign achieved its €300,000 fundraising target for Oceana. According to biborg.com, the donation goal was met across the event's thirteen-day window, with player combat activity inside Skull and Bones directly driving Ubisoft's charitable contributions to ocean conservation efforts.
Biborg created the Waves of Change campaign for Ubisoft. The Paris-based gaming creative agency was selected following a competitive pitch and had a twelve-year prior relationship with Ubisoft, per biborg.com. Biborg developed the visual identity, promotional film, landing page, creator mechanics, and social content for the campaign.
More than 600 content creators participated in the Waves of Change operation, according to biborg.com. Their involvement was supported by structured engagement mechanics developed by Biborg, extending the campaign's reach across platforms where the Skull and Bones player community was already active beyond Ubisoft's owned channels.
Waves of Change is part of Ubisoft's Play Green platform, formalised in June 2021, per news.ubisoft.com. Play Green combines corporate carbon reduction with games-based environmental advocacy. The campaign also reflects Ubisoft's membership in the Playing for the Planet Alliance, supported by the United Nations Environment Programme.
Waves of Change embedded charitable output directly into Skull and Bones' core combat loop. Players defeating enemies — Skirmishers, Headhunters, and Philippe La Peste — triggered real donations without requiring separate purchases or voluntary contributions, making environmental impact a natural byproduct of standard gameplay rather than an optional addition to it.
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