Ubisoft is disabling online services for several older single-player games, including Anno 2070, Far Cry 3, Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. For many of these games, this means that starting September 1, “installation and access to DLC will be unavailable,” according to a Ubisoft support page.
There are 15 games in total whose online features will be “disabled”, including eleven on PC. Disabling online features means that players will no longer be able to play these games in competitive or cooperative multiplayer mode, if they have any, or in some cases use rewards, statistics or news services in the game. Single player modes should remain available.
The PC games that will lose online functionality on September 1 are:
- Year 2070
- assassin’s creed 2
- Assassin’s Creed 3 (original release, unaffected remaster)
- Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
- Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD
- Driver San Francisco
- Far Cry 3 (original release; unaffected remaster)
- Prince of Persia, the forgotten sands
- Silent Hunter 5
- space junkies
- Splinter Cell Blacklist
Of this selection, Space Junkies is the most recent. It is a multiplayer only VR game which was released in 2019 and it will be completely unplayable after September 1st. Space Junkies remains on sale on Steam, 75% off for the duration of the Steam Summer Sale.
Of the remaining games, Assassin’s Creed 3, Brotherhood, Liberation HD, Driver San Francisco, Far Cry 3, Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, and Silent Hunter 5 all have DLC that apparently won’t be available to install or download. access after shutdown. This seems to mean people won’t be able to access the products they’ve paid for, and I’ve reached out to Ubisoft to ask for more details and will update this post if they respond.
“Closing online services for some older games allows us to focus our Resources about providing great experiences for gamers playing newer or more popular titles,” reads Ubisoft’s master list of games with unavailable online features (it’s theirs). “The decision to shut down the online services for a title is always taken with the consideration of our player base, including the level of interest they still have in the game.”
All of the games above were incorrectly included in this master list of retired games earlier this year, seemingly by mistake. Ubisoft said it would provide advance warning before disabling online features in these games, and this news is that warning.
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