Ubisoft Announces Plan to Shut Down Servers for 15 Games

[Uskompuf]

Ubisoft has recently announced plans to decommission servers for 15 games on September 1st 2022 removing any multiplayer functionality and limiting access to downloadable content for certain titles. The games set to lose their servers include several Assassin's Creed titles for PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the Wii U alongside Anno 2070, Far Cry 3, Rayman Legends, and more. These games are mostly older releases except for the VR multiplayer shooter Space Junkies that was launched in 2019.

Closing the online services for some older games allows us to focus our resources on delivering great experiences for players who are playing newer or more popular titles. To help us achieve this, a number of older titles will be added to our list of decommissioned online services on 1 September 2022.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Mussels]

The worst part of this is that they're simply killing off access to paid DLC, they need to just enable it offline for everyone who owns it, if they're going down this road to earn back some of the goodwill lost by canning the games

 

[phill]

Very much agreed, I believe Turn 10 do the same thing with Forza/Forza Horizon. I've not paid for the add on's for Horizon 2 and I'm unable to get to complete the game at all because I can't access or buy add on's that allow it. It really sucks. I guess this is going to become more and more common place now as everything is pretty much going online. Hopefully if you've got the downloads nothing happens to the drives etc. in the consoles, otherwise if you can't re-download the data, game is no good

So sad.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Again there should be law's for this sort of stuff.

Imo games with a online component should be converted if a dev does not want to support it any longer so that consumers themselves get access and means to easily host matches or whatever is needed.
It would be crazy to demand a dev to always support it.
But it should not result in loss of functionality, give it to the people then, make it open.

 

[Rhein7]

Honestly I'm was hoping they will patch the games to take away the multiplayer parts and pull the DLC off from Steam so that people don't accidentally buy them.

 

[dj-electric]

Hey Ubisoft, lets make a deal
You will release all the DLC and all the content you had for those games in one neat package to forever enjoy offline, and you can feel free to kill whatever live services you want for it.

 

[Bomby569]

I think something is missing in the translation, the DLC that you can't acess should only be the multiplayer parts of it, why would they let you still purchase the game and not play the single player DLC?
More you have the remastered versions that include said DLC, would they be on purpose cutting the single player DLC from the remasters?
Your assumptions make no sense at all, that or Ubisoft is crazy and on a path to piss off every customer.

 

[Chaitanya]

Bring back physical media, this online nonsense needs to be culled on priority basis.

 

[Jeager]

Again there should be law's for this sort of stuff.

Imo games with a online component should be converted if a dev does not want to support it any longer so that consumers themselves get access and means to easily host matches or whatever is needed.
It would be crazy to demand a dev to always support it.
But it should not result in loss of functionality, give it to the people then, make it open.

Why ? We are now in a Game as a Service industry, you do not own games, you own the right to play it..
It's too late now, see when SC2 was released without LAN support etc..

 

[Bomby569]

i bet you this is just internet drama and overeaction and no SP DLC will be cut or unavailable, the MP DLC being cut it's just natural.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

limiting access to downloadable content for certain titles.

What does limited access actually mean here. Everyone asssumes that means all DLC is no longer available. Supposing thats true, titles with this limited access to DLC should have had a separate list of which games DLC is no longer available. But I bet there will be a source for that said DLC eventually.

 

[PapaTaipei]

One of the reasons I never buy games from Ubitards.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

i bet you this is just internet drama and overeaction and no SP DLC will be cut or unavailable, the MP DLC being cut it's just natural.

I agree this is likely, but MP DLC content will still be available for private servers if any exist. I'd assume the DLC data is still downloadable, such DLC in the past has updated main content and that was the extent of that without servers to use it.

One of the reasons I never buy games from Ubitards.

There are quite a few decent titles. I liked Anno 1800/2205 and a few others.

 

[trsttte]

i bet you this is just internet drama and overeaction and no SP DLC will be cut or unavailable, the MP DLC being cut it's just natural.

Probably true but I think the drama is still warranted because this was totally avoidable when we were able to self host game servers. There's an entire generation of games that will never get to be played in the future because some corporate assholes decided that it would be slightly more profitable to cut self hosting servers off their games. Another technology field where we went backwards.

 

[Bomby569]

Probably true but I think the drama is still warranted because this was totally avoidable when we were able to self host game servers. There's an entire generation of games that will never get to be played in the future because some corporate assholes decided that it would be slightly more profitable to cut self hosting servers off their games. Another technology field where we went backwards.

Now that i agree. For a company eternaly supporting dead MP games makes no sense, but they could allow that.

 

[64K]

Ubisoft upper management are dysfunctional. Back in 2012 the CEO claimed in an interview that 95% of PC gamers were pirates. No mention of the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that PC gamers were spending on their games and DLC year after year. The CEO never retracted that statement and that's why still to this day that there is so much DRM on their PC version of games.

 

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

Ubisoft upper management are dysfunctional. Back in 2012 the CEO claimed in an interview that 95% of PC gamers were pirates. No mention of the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that PC gamers were spending on their games and DLC year after year. The CEO never retracted that statement and that's why still to this day that there is so much DRM on their PC version of games.

That was his point.
He wasn't satisfied with hundreds of millions of dollars, he wanted hundreds of billions of dollars.

 

[Steevo]

Ubisoft and Atari both suck, they need to realize that people will pay for content that is worth it. But no one at McDonalds expects a 20 burger for 5 bucks and that’s what they are, McDonalds pumping out the same basic franchise games and expecting gamers to all just pay premium prices for them.

 

[bug]

Again there should be law's for this sort of stuff.

Imo games with a online component should be converted if a dev does not want to support it any longer so that consumers themselves get access and means to easily host matches or whatever is needed.
It would be crazy to demand a dev to always support it.
But it should not result in loss of functionality, give it to the people then, make it open.

But there are laws already. Laws that say you don't actually buy anything, you're just licensing the rights to play content owned by Ubi (and others). And when they say your time is up, your time is up.

All is not lost, though. Ubi will sell the rights for the same game back to you. You just have to "purchase" the newer versions, featuring other skins.

 

[Rahnak]

I think something is missing in the translation, the DLC that you can't acess should only be the multiplayer parts of it, why would they let you still purchase the game and not play the single player DLC?
More you have the remastered versions that include said DLC, would they be on purpose cutting the single player DLC from the remasters?
Your assumptions make no sense at all, that or Ubisoft is crazy and on a path to piss off every customer.

This is what it says in the source article:

You will be unable to play multiplayer, link Ubisoft accounts in-game or use online features.

Additionally, the installation and access to DLC will be unavailable.

Doesn't say anything about it being MP DLC, just DLC. And Ubisoft is retarded enough to do it like that too.

 

[chrcoluk]

Games as a service sucks.

 

[AsRock]

This has been a thing for so many, they want to collect data and once they are done fuck it, this has been a UBI thing to be for so long like since when they came out with GRAW which all so required there servers and not a dedicated server like the original.

If no one expected this well silly them.

No milk to milk, shut it down.

 

[Chrispy_]

I'm not at the "boycott" stage with Ubisoft yet but they're getting close. The last game I paid Ubisoft money for was Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.

Even with no Ubisoft or EA for the last decade, I have too many great games to play and not enough free time to play them all. If you don't like a company's business practices, stop giving them your money.

 

[MarsM4N]

That's the 2nd time they did that this year: Ubisoft has officially shut down online services for over 90 games
Guess it's going financially down hill with Ubisoft, like their stocks.

What I didn't get out of their press release, does this also include Steam versions? Content for their games should be stored on their own servers, right?

 

[Dave65]

I was just thinking about this with World of Tanks. People spend lot of money on tanks and buying gold, would be a real shit storm if WG ever decided to pull the plug. I can see Ubisoft doing it, it's their style..