Five Assassin's Creed games, Rayman Legends, and other older Ubisoft games will all have their online services discontinued.
Ubisoft will remove the online service:
According to Ubisoft's announcement, a number of its older games' online functionality will be shut down as of September 1. Below is a list of the PC games impacted, along with information on when they were released and what features were taken away:
The decommissioned games are listed below.
- Anno 2070 (2011): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features
- Assassin's Creed 2 (2009): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features
- Assassin's Creed 3 (2012): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
- Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (2010): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
- Assassin's Creed Liberation HD (2014): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access DLC
- Driver San Francisco (2011): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
- Far Cry 3 (2012): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
- Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (2010): co-op multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
- Silent Hunter 5 (2010): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
- Space Junkies (2019): "As a multiplayer only title, you will be unable to play the game going forward."
- Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2013): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features
You won't typically be able to link your Ubisoft account and access the online features when these games are decommissioned. You won't be able to access and download released downloadable content for some titles, though. This applies to several games, including Driver San Francisco and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.
Far Cry 3 & Assassin's Creed 3
The decommissioning won't have an impact on the remastered editions of Far Cry 3 or Assassin's Creed 3, only the original releases.
Just over three years after its debut, the multiplayer-only virtual reality arcade shooter Space Junkies, created by Ubisoft Montpellier, will be shutting down.
DLC Info
Cutting off DLC and, in one instance, an entire game, though, is concerning. The $40 multiplayer VR shooter called Space Junkies is still on sale on Steam, with no indication that it will no longer be playable in two months.
If NFTs haven't already been thoroughly disproved, watching Ubisoft completely discontinue these services only serves to highlight how ridiculous the company's Quartz NFT endeavour is. What happens to the blockchain-backed investment after the game to which it is tied closes, and the cryptocurrency booster pipe fantasy of using a single NFT across several games never came true?
This widespread decommissioning also exemplifies the problems with preservation that come with walled garden online businesses. Due to their support for private servers, online games that are a great deal older than those listed can still be played. It's important to keep in mind that every game with a live service will ultimately stop receiving official support and shut down. You won't be able to access Overwatch, Destiny, or Ubisoft's own Rainbow Six Siege at some point in the future—possibly years or even decades—when their servers are turned off.