A day after this article was published, Ubisoft issued a statement saying that the notices on the games' Steam pages were incorrect. The article has been updated to reflect the latest information.
Two entries from the list of games Ubisoft is decommissioning online support for—Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD and Silent Hunter 5—briefly looked like they would be rendered completely unplayable by the move, contradicting Ubisoft's initial statement on what what aspects of each game would be cut off. Ubisoft now says it used the wrong wording in notices on the games' store pages.
The back story: Last week, Ubisoft announced that it would be shutting off online support for a selection of games released between 2009 and 2019, including 11 on PC, and published a list of the features this action would take away. All of the games would lose multiplayer and account linking, with relevant games also cutting off players' ability to access DLC. Only one of the games on the list, the 2019 multiplayer-only VR shooter Space Junkies, was going to be rendered completely inaccessible by the move.
Since the announcement, Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD and Silent Hunter 5 have been pulled from sale "at the request of the publisher," and they also received new notices on their Steam pages that read: "Please note that this title will not be accessible following September 1st, 2022." This same notice appears on the doomed Space Junkies' store page as well, while Splinter Cell Blacklist and Prince of Persia: the Forgotten Sands, two other games from the list, remain available for purchase with a notice that "the deluxe edition and DLC for this title will not be accessible following September 1st, 2022."
That led us to believe that Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD and Silent Hunter 5 were going to become totally unplayable, but Ubisoft now says that current owners of those games "will still be able to access, play, or redownload them," implying that the notices on Steam were erroneous. In a statement issued to PC Gamer, the company said:
"As stated in our support article, only DLCs and online features will be affected by the upcoming decommissioning. Current owners of those games will still be able to access, play or redownload them. Our teams are working with our partners to update this information across all storefronts and are also assessing all available options for players who will be impacted when these games’ online services are decommissioned on September 1st, 2022. It has always been our intention to do everything in our power to allow those legacy titles to remain available in the best possible conditions for players, and this is what we are working towards."
This situation, along with the PlayStation Store removing purchased movies from user's libraries in Germany and Austria, has heightened exiting anxieties over the mutability of our digital purchases. It seems as though owners of Liberation HD and Silent Hunter 5 will still be able to access their purchases, but the pulling of online features and DLC access is an ill omen.
