Ubisoft postpones “decommissioning” of older online titles until October

Following July’s announcement that Ubisoft would be “decommissioning” the online portions of some of its older titles on 1st September, the publisher has said it’s postponing the move to 1st October in many cases, and that Anno 2070 will now escape unscathed.

Ubisoft originally announced that 15 titles that would be affected by the move: Anno 2070, Assassin’s Creed 2, Assassin’s Creed 3, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD, Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Driver San Francisco, Far Cry 3, Ghost Recon Future Soldier , Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Rayman Legends, Silent Hunter 5, Space Junkies, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and ZombiU.

The precise effects of decommissioning depend on the game, but ranged from the removal of multiplayer modes, online features, and DLC to being unable to access the game at all.

in an new update to its original post, however, Ubisoft has now announced some changes to its initial plans, following investigations into “what is possible to reduce disruption”. This begins with the decision to push the decommissioning process back to 1st October for all games except the online-only Space Junkies for PC, which will cease to function from tomorrow, 1st September, as originally planned.

Additionally, the single-player DLC for several games on PC – specfiically Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Assassin’s Creed 3 (2012 release), Far Cry 3, and Splinter Cell Blacklist – will be available to download and keep as long as it’s activated prior to 1st October. There will be no impact to the same single-player DLC on consoles.

And finally, there’s great news for Anno 2070 players as the game has now been removed from the decommissioning list completely. “There is still an active game team working on Anno at Ubisoft Mainz,” Ubisoft explains, “and a taskforce was dedicated to deploying an update to Anno 2070 that will upgrade the game and replace its old online services, allowing players to enjoy its online features into the future.”

Full details on what will and will not be affected by the decommissioning process from 1st October can be found on Ubisoft’s support page.