[Helljumper]

Ubisoft has announced it will be deactivating the servers of some of its older games on September 1.

The shutdowns mean that owners of multiple games will be unable to play multiplayer at all for multiple Assassin's Creed titles, Far Cry 3, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Driver San Francisco and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands.

In addition, many PC titles will no longer be able to install or access DLC and Ghost Recon Future Soldier's single-player campaign will only work in offline mode, according to Ubisoft.

The publisher claims that 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."

Units and Challenges for the games that used Ubisoft Connect will also be disabled, meaning players will no longer be able to earn Units for completing certain tasks.

Content that could be unlocked through Ubisoft Connect, such as maps and skins, will also be disabled, meaning players will no longer be able to unlock them.

This is the second round of server closures from Ubisoft this year. In April, it closed the multiplayer portions of titles such as Avatar, Rainbow Six Vegas and Rainbow Six Vegas 2, marking an end to the ability to officially play those games online.

The full list of games to be taken offline, according to Ubisoft, is as follows:
Anno 2070
Assassin's Creed 2
Assassin's Creed 3
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Assassin's Creed Liberation HD
Assassin's Creed Revelations
Driver San Francisco
Far Cry 3
Ghost Recon Future Soldier
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
Rayman Legends
Silent Hunter 5
Space Junkies
Splinter Cell: Blacklist
ZombiU

Ubisoft is shutting down multiplayer for 15 ‘older’ games, and even ‘access to some DLC’ | VGC

Some DLC on PC will no longer be accessible, according to the publisher…

www.videogameschronicle.com

 

[Night Sky]

Shockedpikachuface.jpg

Inb4 "nobody plays these old games anyway"

 

[ManofTwo]

Private servers

 

[Arkam]

Some of those games are super old. I am surprised they werent shut down years ago. It does suck ass for those who want to play an older game, but I understand that there is a cost for Ubi.

When I was working at EA we shut down our Sports games online servers usually after just a few years. Some popular ones lasted longer, but that was not the norm.

This is one my main gripes with modern game design. While online components can be and are often great... when they are a major aspect of the game it becomes a long term liability. Developers need to give more forethought on the experience when the lights are eventually turned off. If nothing else but to ensure a smooth (albeit gimped) user experience.

 

[Snes nes]

this is where they should be required to allow access to the server software but the communities around these games will just have to make their own stuff through hacking. I guess the good thing is that the only could get quite a bit better if they put the rollback stuff into it and thats peer to peer so no need for too many servers.

 

[HE1NZ]

Removing DLC access is just a scam. They should make them free and include in the base game download if they are so eager to drop support.

 

[Hostile_18]

Some of those games are super old. I am surprised they werent shut down years ago. It does suck ass for those who want to play an older game, but I understand that there is a cost for Ubi.

When I was working at EA we shut down our Sports games online servers usually after just a few years. Some popular ones lasted longer, but that was not the norm.

This is one my main gripes with modern game design. While online components can be and are often great... when they are a major aspect of the game it becomes a long term liability. Developers need to give more forethought on the experience when the lights are eventually turned off. If nothing else but to ensure a smooth (albeit gimped) user experience.

Does cost not scale with use? For example if there was a 100 people regularly playing a super old game would the cost per person be a lot higher than if it was getting thousands of players daily? My (ignorant?) thought would be that the cost would be so small for a game 10 years old it would barely be worth the bad press to shut it down... unless its completely abandoned by the player base.

 

[mcz117chief]

Does cost not scale with use? For example if there was a 100 people regularly playing a super old game would the cost per person be a lot higher than if it was getting thousands of players daily? My (ignorant?) thought would be that the cost would be so small for a game 10 years old it would barely be worth the bad press to shut it down... unless its completely abandoned by the player base.

My group runs an ARMA3 server with 100 player slots and around 50gigs of mod space for like $35 a month. I'm sure gaming companies can run them much cheaper since these rental companies need to make a profit out of them directly.

 

[El Rey]

Glad I platinumed all them Assassin's Creeds anyways!