A number of Ubisoft games are going out of business in September 2022. You can still play them, but all online functions will be dropped. We provide the overview.
We all knew it would come to this eventually. Around a decade ago, the era of digital distribution finally hit the mainstream, with numerous games major publishers relying significantly on online features, always on, digital-only DLCs and so on. This trend gives us an incredibly agile game development with numerous updates, content expansions, indeed, it makes modern service games possible in the first place. But of course it also brings with it a risk.
The risk that game content will be lost for good once the servers are switched off. And publishers shutting down their servers at some point may become necessary as an economic decision – as unfortunate as that may be for us as players. And now the first big wave of these shutdowns is gradually hitting us.
Last year, for example, the end of the PlayStation portable shop made the rounds with such great protest that Sony decided against pulling the plug on PS Vita and PS3 as well. In addition, 2023 is the end for Nintendo’s 3DS, here theoretically countless DLC content and games that never appeared physically are dropped.
The servers are being shut down: What does this mean?
Ubisoft is shutting down online servers for 15 games in September. The PC version is not affected for all candidates, but for most of them. In this case, shutdown means: All online functionality is gone. You can still purchase, download and install the games via Ubisoft Connect, but there are no longer any online features within the games.
So if you want to play Splinter Cell: Blacklist in co-op – and it’s one of the best co-op experiences in the entire stealth genre – you should urgently do so until September, because after that the option will be lost forever. Various aspects of the game such as the survival or co-op missions are designed to be played together, so this is where the shutdown weighs particularly heavily:
The situation is less dramatic in Assassin’s Creed: Here you lose the possibility to play the multiplayer modes of the old parts (i.e. Brotherhood, Revelations, Assassin’s Creed 3), which have been deserted for years anyway.
But: For many of the older games, the option to buy or install the DLCs is also dropped. So if you bought the King Washington expansion for Assassin’s Creed 3 years ago and want to play it again, you lose the option here.
Sure, alternatively you can always switch to the remaster variants, because they have all the story DLCs in them, but that means a) an additional purchase and b) the remaster variants are not always the better ones. In the case of Assassin’s Creed 3, people here are still arguing about this to this day.
Which games are affected?
We copy you the (official list from Ubisoft) here, so you have all the games at a glance:
As I said, with most games you have remaster alternatives, which means that at least the story content is not lost forever. But in some cases – like Splinter Cell: Blacklist – one of the best features ends up under the guillotine. We’re checking with Ubisoft to see if there are at least any offline patches planned, like when Games for Windows Live was shut down. But if you want to be on the safe side: Play Splinter Cell: Blacklist!
