Ubisoft To Shut Down Multiplayer For Older Games (theverge.com) 62
A collection of over a dozen games from Ubisoft will see their online elements shut down on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in September, "which means players won't be able to play their multiplayer components, access their online features, link Ubisoft accounts in-game, or install and access downloadable content," reports The Verge. From the report: "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," Ubisoft's help page reads. With Assassin's Creed Brotherhood having originally released in November 2010, it's had almost 12 years of online support. But it's always sad to see a piece of gaming history become inaccessible, especially given the game's multiplayer element was missing from its remaster on the PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
Alongside Brotherhood, the online services associated with 2011's Assassin's Creed Revelations on PS3 and Xbox 360 are also being shut down, as well as 2012's Assassin's Creed 3 on PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U. [...] Other games set to have their online services decommissioned across various platforms this September include Driver San Francisco, Far Cry 3's 2012 release, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Prince of Persia the Forgotten Sands, Rayman Legends, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. You can view the full list of games here.
Alongside Brotherhood, the online services associated with 2011's Assassin's Creed Revelations on PS3 and Xbox 360 are also being shut down, as well as 2012's Assassin's Creed 3 on PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U. [...] Other games set to have their online services decommissioned across various platforms this September include Driver San Francisco, Far Cry 3's 2012 release, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Prince of Persia the Forgotten Sands, Rayman Legends, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. You can view the full list of games here.
Not cool. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's ok to consolidate stuff like this on to low-volume servers, but not to shut it down completely. This is a bad way of treating one's customers, and is one of the many reasons I NEVER buy games made by Ubisoft.
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It's ok to consolidate stuff like this on to low-volume servers, but not to shut it down completely. This is a bad way of treating one's customers, and is one of the many reasons I NEVER buy games made by Ubisoft.
I feel your pain, but the problem is not so much the servers and the low or high infrastructure utilization, but the people caring for those servers. Most likely, those servers were treated as pets (more so since development of said games probably started in the late 00's), not cattle, so keeping the people around to tend for the servers and SW becomes a burden.
In my young age, we only had single player, in my young adult days I've preferred single player (we had multiplayer over IPX), and in my 50's, I can
Re:Not cool. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's ok to consolidate stuff like this on to low-volume servers, but not to shut it down completely. This is a bad way of treating one's customers, and is one of the many reasons I NEVER buy games made by Ubisoft.
I feel your pain, but the problem is not so much the servers and the low or high infrastructure utilization, but the people caring for those servers.
I feel Ubisoft's pain (that's a joke), especially after 10+ years of revenue collection, but if they no longer want to host and make money off their old games, then there is another alternative.
Stop being so fucking greedy and release all legal constraint.
They may not want to maintain the older releases, but I'll bet someone else out there would.
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They may not want to maintain the older releases, but I'll bet someone else out there would.
I doubt it. There's no guarantee that the knowledge required to maintain old releases at all overlaps with anyone interested in playing a decade old game or supporting servers for the handful of people still playing it. Hell there's actual popular and useful open source software that has fallen out of maintenance in the world.
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I feel Ubisoft's pain (that's a joke), especially after 10+ years of revenue collection, but if they no longer want to host and make money off their old games, then there is another alternative.
Stop being so fucking greedy and release all legal constraint.
They may not want to maintain the older releases, but I'll bet someone else out there would.
I highly doubt that. A couple years ago, Unity abruptly announced that they were ending developer of their existing online multiplayer APIs and would be removing them in the future. They announced a new API would replace it, but it was in early development and was a couple years away at best.
Why? They only had one person in house that knew how the existing API worked and they quit. No one wanted to take over the project. They couldn't even hire someone to do it. The best they could do was find a new team th
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...The people who have the knowledge to maintain online multiplayer systems can easily find better work and don't want to spend their time maintaining old code.
There is a large and fundamental difference in maintaining code that needs to change, and freezing it to support the existing functioning product in perpetuity.
Also known as one of the main justifications of virtualization today.
At some point in the near future, allowing older digital environments to die off and become extinct will become as irrelevant an excuse as "technology" or "humans".
Re:Not cool. (Score:5, Insightful)
it's probably also the software itself. The software running on those servers is probably way out of date as well - and the software won't run on anything newer than the ancient version of Linux or Windows it was running out, long out of support and with well known vulnerabilities.
You might thing it was fun to go "Yay, obsolete TLS 1.0 and 1.1!" but then these servers might be stuck using TLS 1.0 or 1.1 and there was no way to administer them anymore because no modern browser would accept those connections even through config options.
So as time went on, the servers simply fell way out of security updates and patches and the software is so ancient it can't connect to modern systems for administration.
The same happened to the Little Big Planet servers - they kept getting exploited because the online servers kept getting hacked because they ran ancient software with known security holes and it was becoming too big of a burden to undo all the damage caused by hackers.
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Depends how many external dependencies the code had. In most cases you can install a newer version of the same OS and your applications will all keep running, especially when they are server based applications that don't depend on complex ui libraries etc.
It's possible to run a dedicated quake server quite easily on a modern system, even tho the original quake game dates from the 90s for instance.
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I know I certainly won't be giving them any more of my money after this little stunt. They should be releasing a patch to fix it so people can use the DLC they paid for, or they should be issuing refunds.
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And we're okay with that. You may not like what I'm about to say, but the reality is there is no shortage of "entertainment". And that's all that is, entertainment. There's only a tiny subset of the population that clings onto older games which don't get continuous updates or new content. As such it's no surprise that companies eventually shut down the servers.
What does the common person do? Move on without any care in the world. Game X stops working? That's fine, Game Y, Z, are ready to go and installed, b
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Why would "the masses" (which seems to imply a majority of consumers) care about whether you can still use the multiplayer features of primarily single player games from 12 years ago? The majority of consumers don't. Expecting the majority of consumers to still want the multiplayer features of their games working 12 years after they bought it seems pretty stupid to me. Do you actually know people?
Essence of DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Additionally, the installation and access to DLC will be unavailable.
Thanks for the money though, sucker.
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I hardly think anyone is a sucker after getting over a decade worth of entertainment for a sub $100 investment. Shit go to the cinema and you'll pay $20 for 2hours of entertainment. Are you calling the entire movie industry customers suckers?
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
No more Driver: SF online?! (Score:1)
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Driver survival mode made a great drinking game.
What is the expected support lifetime for games? (Score:2)
Many comments here would suggest that it should be in perpetuity, but surely that is not realistic or sustainable.
What factors warrant the maintenance of game server infrastructure?
Surely the correct answer involves some kind of calculation involving length of service vs active user base on the one hand and maintenance costs vs revenue on the other hand?
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I think I get your point. However, in a realm, far, far away...there was a game called: NeverWinter Nights.
Still having the original installation discs. Also the original DLC I have in that format. Anyway, on those discs were the game files, but also software to create your own campaigns and software to run your own server.
If memory serves, you could even hook a groups of such privately hosted servers together for a (much) larger play area. All came with a one time purchase fee.
There was a company which upd
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Once they kill the servers they should be required to release the server software. This is the only way to fix it.
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They are still selling these games and DLC. They are on sale right now as part of the steam summer sale and there is no notice about the DLC that people are purchasing TODAY will stop working in just a couple of months.
I don't mind that they don't support this stuff forever but they should stop selling it before they just break it.
As part of getting Farcry 5 it came with Farcry 3 and my friend and I planned to play this together later. That feature and the DLC for it is going to stop working shortly. A game
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"Far Cry 3's 2012 release" No it wont.
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Are you sure about that? Far cry 3 has no remastered version on steam and the release is listed from 2012. It sure looks like that version will lose multiplayer and DLC and it is on sale right now.
Multiplayer isn't the problem (Score:2)
Release the code (Score:5)
I REALLY wish these game companies would release the code for the servers that run the online components of these games when they retire them, so the community can take over, but that'll never happen.
Re:Release the code (Score:5, Interesting)
This should be a part of Right to Repair legislation.
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If we were talking about stand alone executables, you might have a point, but that largely stopped being the case around the time of the 360 and PS3. These are online platforms with multiple services, almost always with 3rd party software dependencies. It's not practical technically, nor possible legally, to just "release the software" for the online services that underpin games from that generation and later.
And that's ignoring that that would only help on PC, not console platforms in which the layers such
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I am mostly talking about PC games, but I suspect a PS3 or XBox 360 online game server runs on a standard OS like Windows or Linux. Why would they waste resources building specialized hardware or OS to run a game server when existing platforms are more than capable?. Releasing the source code will allow others to pick it up and rewrite the software for home or private use, and remove any crap that is no longer necessary to do that.
I understand that for consoles, it might not be easy to get the actual game s
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part of the release could be to issue a patch to allow the selection of private servers from within the game
this is not permitted by Microsoft or Sony - if you allow your game to do that, it will not pass certification
further more, you ignored my point about legal exposure
further more, you ignored my point that some of the services multiplayer on consoles depends on is software actually written and hosted by Microsoft and Sony (developers each individually implement their own backends for these services on
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Look, you seem to want to treat it as an all or nothing deal, like if they happen to use some of Microsoft's or Sony's services, then absolutely NOTHING can be released, and I don't think that's true at all. I get that there are challenges. I never said there weren't.
Further, I'm not trying to have a fucking boardroom discussion about the legalities or corporate intricacies involved in this, I'm expressing my desire for companies to consider releasing whatever code they can when they End-of-Life these games
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fair enough. I mean, it's easy to want things. I want everything too! I'm only providing concrete reasons why you should temper those expectations but if you'd rather just stomp your feet, have at it
consider releasing whatever code they can when they End-of-Life these games
but some have and do - PC games, from smaller studios, for obvious reasons - but large commercial games became too complex around the time of the 360 and ps3 (that have PC targets) which is why you don't see it in that sector of the marke
Space Junkies (Score:2)
I never played Space Junkies (or I might have refunded it because I didn't like it), but this is a multiplayer-only game that was released 3 years ago. Anyone who bought this game is now completely unable to play it. This kind of thing should be criminal, even if the playerbase is tiny. Those people paid money for a game they can no longer play at all.
In my experiance (Score:2)
Ubislut shuts down their verification / activation servers years before the game servers go down, which is why I have not bought anything from them in a couple decades
course this was a couple decades ago with a PC game before the age of storefronts and whatnot, but I bought a fucking game, and it was unusable within a matter of months thanks to their heavy handed DRM... from that point on they do not exist to me
to summarize, I pay 60$ for a game, get treated like a thief, have my computer infected, then THE
And they are currently running an add campaign (Score:1)
"Better experience for our customers..." (Score:2)
"I won't cum in your mouth"
"I'll still respect you in the morning"
"Your call is very important to us"
The only "better experience" that exists here is the tiny world that lives on inside the bean counters' and paper pushers' heads.
How is this legal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Removing a feature after someone buys something should result in the someone allowed to get their money back at the very least.
These people not only paid money for the game with the advertised features, they invested their own time playing it.
If a game company wants to do this kind of thing, they should have to put the end date in the advertising when selling the game.
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Removing a feature after someone buys something should result in the someone allowed to get their money back at the very least.
You won't find a single court in the world will agree with you on that. Computer games are a form of entertainment, and we're talking about entertainment which has lasted over a decade for a sub $100 investment. In many cases the hardware originally used to play this entertainment no longer even works.
In terms of "delivered performance" any court will decide you very much have gotten all of your money's worth and then some.
they invested their own time playing it.
Excuse the strong language but that has to be the single most retarded view of playin
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You won't find a single court in the world will agree with you on that. Computer games are a form of entertainment, and we're talking about entertainment which has lasted over a decade for a sub $100 investment. In many cases the hardware originally used to play this entertainment no longer even works.
In terms of "delivered performance" any court will decide you very much have gotten all of your money's worth and then some.
Sorry, the ACCC got here first. Please google the ACCC, Valve and Epic. The ACCC took Valve to court over not giving software refunds and won comprehensively at every turn and was forced to pay their legal fees, ACCC legal fees and post a humiliating message that Australian Consumer Law can't be overridden by any contract or licence, especially non-negotiable shrink-wrapp software licences. They also tapped Epic on the shoulder about not offering refunds and they folded like a wet paper bag rather than figh
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The ACCC took Valve to court over not giving software refunds
Indeed they did. And Valve changed their practice and now offer software refunds *WITHIN A LIMITED TIME PERIOD*. There's nothing limited about a game being available to play for over 90000 hours and the ACCC won't uphold a refund request their either, because expected performance as defined in the trade practices act will have well and truly been delivered.
When Wargaming World of Tanks nerfed and modified Premium tanks that were purchased years ago the ACCC forced them to give refunds here in Australia
There's a difference between having something degraded in an ongoing and functioning system, vs something ceasing to operated beyond a an expected life t
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In terms of "delivered performance" any court will decide you very much have gotten all of your money's worth and then some.
And yet I wonder just how much higher the price of a modern smartphone will go, as companies continue to pressure addic, er I mean consumers into throwing it in the trash every 2-3 years.
Think a $3000 smartphone with a 3-year expected life, will still be dismissed as "all your money's worth"? It's hardly justifying it at todays obscene prices. A disposable society will warp legal rulings like this.
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The price of the smartphone has literally not changed. Just because we have more advanced smartphone options than ever before doesn't mean my mother didn't just buy a new smartphone for exactly the same $200 that she did a decade ago. No one is forcing you to buy something with a fancy folding screen.
I'd accuse your post of being whataboutism, but in order for it to be that it would need to make even a bit of sense. And it doesn't.
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We live in an era of not one $1000+ smartphone, but many $1000+ models from mega-corps who will eventually own everyone else.
And our aging parents who will always be satisfied with the $200 model, is not the reason Apple is a trillion-dollar company who certainly didn't get that way by selling $200 phones.
A sliver of the smartphone demographic as a defense, is what truly doesn't make sense.
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So you wouldn't care if a game company deleted all your saved progress in a game? Sorry, your time wasn't an investment of any kind, it its worthless!
Just say no to Ubisoft (Score:2)
I will never buy any Ubisoft game after they required Ubisoft account to play even single player games.
I gave up on gaming (Score:2)
SAM FISHER RIP (Score:2)
Not Splinter Cell: Blacklist.
Man, I had a lot of fun playing that game online years back. I got pretty good at the co-op and Spies vs Mercs mode. I haven't touched it in years, but it's sad to see it go.
That's what you get (Score:2)
for buying Ubisoft. No sympathy from me.
are they going to refund the lost DLC? (Score:2)
are they going to refund the lost DLC?
will they lose the right to use an DMCA take down on people who post how to restore / hack that DLC back?
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are they going to refund the lost DLC?
Refund what? Do you think getting over a decade of entertainment of a tiny investment is leaving you robbed? Let's compare that to going to the cinema: $20, 2hours, = $10/hour vs playing a game for 11 years $100 (DLC included), 96360hours... let's say 48000house, even gamers sleep, = $0.002/hour.
I think you got your money's worth.
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You're not being robbed of anything. You paid for entertainment and you got that in spades.
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Let's compare that to going to the cinema:
interesting you compared it to the cinema as opposed to say, a dvd.
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When you go to the cinema you know in advance that you will get 2 hours of entertainment.
You can also buy the movie on physical media such as VHS, DVD or Bluray - in which case you can continue watching the movie indefinitely.
It's about expectation and marketing.
Did the users expect to be able to play the game in perpetuity?
Did the terms and conditions make users aware that the game had an expiry date?
Ubisoft Assassinates Assassin's Creed (Score:2)
There. FTFY.
They are STILL selling these games (Score:3)
These games they are shutting down are on sale on their website and on steam right now! If they are going to break the DLC in these games in just a few months they should not be selling the games and the DLC today!
If they want to shut down servers for abandoned games then the games should be abandoned. This should be illegal because their pages selling these games don't tell people that many of the features in these games will stop working shortly.
Focusing on great experiences for players... (Score:2)
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It always annoys me when a company does something that's obviously to benefit themselves, not their customers, but they spin it as if it were being done for their customers. Don't they realize how insulting it sounds? Are the people who write these press releases really so completely tone deaf, they don't realize they're treating their customers like idiots?
So help me understand something here ... (Score:2)
I don't have any Ubisoft games simply because their games don't interest me, so I'm struggling to understand this. Are they actually saying that DLC that was already bought can't be played anymore? How does that even work?
I'm a big fan of Paradox Interactive games and have tons of their DLC. Each time I get a DLC, it installs to my hard drive and I just have it. Even if my internet is down, I can still play them. Does Ubisoft not actually install the DLC files to your hard drive? That's a really fucked up b
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