Say goodbye to AC: Liberation HD, Anno 2070, and Silent Hunter 5..

M

Mangler

Well-known member
https://store.steampowered.com/app/48240/Anno_2070/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/260210/Assassins_Creed_Liberation_HD/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/48110/Silent_Hunter_5_Battle_of_the_Atlantic/


Please note this title will not be accessible following September 1st, 2022
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Last week, Ubisoft announced that it would be shutting off online support(opens in new tab) for a selection of games released between 2009 and 2019, including 11 on PC, alongside a list of what features this action would take away. All of the games would lose multiplayer and account linking, with relevant games also cutting off players' ability to access DLC. Only one of the games on the list, the 2019 multiplayer-only VR shooter Space Junkies, was said to be rendered completely inaccessible by the move.

Since the announcement, Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD and Silent Hunter 5 have been pulled from sale "at the request of the publisher," and they also received a new notice on their Steam pages: "Please note that this title will not be accessible following September 1st, 2022." This same notice appears on the doomed Space Junkies(opens in new tab)' store page as well, while Splinter Cell Blacklist(opens in new tab) and Prince of Persia: the Forgotten Sands(opens in new tab), two other games from the list, remain available for purchase with a notice that "The deluxe edition and DLC for this title will not be accessible following September 1st, 2022."
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https://www.pcgamer.com/ubisofts-on...-games-unplayable-for-people-who-bought-them/


They had no problem selling these during the summer sale, nice.
 
I think the press is going to take this and run. Maybe Ubi will need to reverse this. I see no reason why they can't unlock these games - who does it hurt? Definitely will think twice about buying any future Ubi games.
 
They even have one of their developers pushing to get off this list.

https://anno-union.com/union-update-update-anno-2070-online-services/

Hello Anno Community,

Today we are informing you that Ubisoft has decided to decommission online services for some older games on September 1st, including Anno 2070. You can find the full list of all impacted games here. And, as you know, Anno 2070 has several features tied to its online services.

That said, after an initial investigation, we have decided to dedicate some of our development resources to work on upgrading Anno 2070’s aged online services infrastructure to a new system, so that these features can continue to be used past the mentioned date. However, we cannot yet guarantee that we’ll be able to successfully upgrade/replace the old services as we’d like to.

Please note that until September 1st, the current online services will still be fully available. We will provide more detailed updates on the future of Anno 2070 in the coming weeks and months.

Thank you for your understanding.
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Like FFS Ubisoft. What a PR nightmare.
 
By 'not available', do they mean you can't access them from Steam because of the uPlay connection being severed? Can you still play those games offline through uPlay? Can you uninstall them and reinstall them after September 1, assuming you owned them prior to September 1?

So many stupid questions about stupid games I don't even own. :bleh:
 
twonha said:
By 'not available', do they mean you can't access them from Steam because of the uPlay connection being severed? Can you still play those games offline through uPlay? Can you uninstall them and reinstall them after September 1, assuming you owned them prior to September 1?

So many stupid questions about stupid games I don't even own. :bleh:
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Seems like you will still be able to download the main games and play off-line if it has that. Just that the DLC won't be available anymore. And if it's already downloaded with the DLC, that DLC will be rendered non-functional from Sep,1st, 2022 onward.
 
Trunks0 said:
Seems like you will still be able to download the main games and play off-line if it has that. Just that the DLC won't be available anymore. And if it's already downloaded with the DLC, that DLC will be rendered non-functional from Sep,1st, 2022 onward.
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I stand corrected. In the case of AC Liberation. Where it will be going away entirely.

https://kotaku.com/assassin-s-creed-far-cry-steam-sale-drm-piracy-1849164201

So if you bought it during the recent steam sale... better play it quick as it will be going away. The article mentions it may remain through AC3... however AC3 is also loosing all of it's DLC, so that is unlikely imho.
 
Trunks0 said:
I stand corrected. In the case of AC Liberation. Where it will be going away entirely.

https://kotaku.com/assassin-s-creed-far-cry-steam-sale-drm-piracy-1849164201

So if you bought it during the recent steam sale... better play it quick as it will be going away. The article mentions it may remain through AC3... however AC3 is also loosing all of it's DLC, so that is unlikely imho.
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You can correct your correction:

Update: 7/11/22, 1:00 p.m. ET: Ubisoft clarified in a statement to Kotaku that “current owners of [decommissioned games] will still be able to access, play or redownload them.” This would include Assassin’s Creed: Liberation. The company said that only DLC and online features will be affected, and that it’s working to “update this information across all storefronts,” but didn’t clarify why the single-player game was still being delisted from Valve’s storefront.
 
I didn't even know the AC games had multiplayer.

With that being said, what I don't understand about this is presumably these older games don't have a large population playing them. Therefore it wouldn't require much server time to host them.

Is it really a huge expense for a large company to keep legacy servers running with very little traffic? My understanding is that you can run multiple processes on these servers, so what is the harm in keeping something running that's taking 1% or less capacity?
 
twonha said:
You can correct your correction:

Update: 7/11/22, 1:00 p.m. ET: Ubisoft clarified in a statement to Kotaku that “current owners of [decommissioned games] will still be able to access, play or redownload them.” This would include Assassin’s Creed: Liberation. The company said that only DLC and online features will be affected, and that it’s working to “update this information across all storefronts,” but didn’t clarify why the single-player game was still being delisted from Valve’s storefront.
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That makes more sense.
 
Nagorak said:
I didn't even know the AC games had multiplayer.

With that being said, what I don't understand about this is presumably these older games don't have a large population playing them. Therefore it wouldn't require much server time to host them.

Is it really a huge expense for a large company to keep legacy servers running with very little traffic? My understanding is that you can run multiple processes on these servers, so what is the harm in keeping something running that's taking 1% or less capacity?
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My guess is it's less about the hosting and more about the games not conforming to how they want to run their server infrastructure. Maybe these games can't comply with new security initiatives. Only they really know the real answer though.

We all saw this coming from miles away with games and content reliant on a network connection to a server (for authentication and/or online play). They really should make this stuff DRM free though if they're going to sunset it. Highly doubtful they're going to commit the resources for that though.
 
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