"Last month, Ubisoft announced the latest in a long line of online server shutdowns for its games, including a few that would make previously purchased single-player DLC for some of its legacy games inaccessible. Yesterday, Ubisoft backtracked on that announcement a bit with an update that would mitigate the shutdown's impact.

Significantly, previously purchased PC DLC for four impacted titles—Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed III, Far Cry 3, and Splinter Cell Blacklist— will now be available to download and keep permanently. Players will have to activate that DLC on their UPlay accounts before the newly delayed server shutdown date of October 1, however, to maintain access and the ability to redownload the content past that date.

The online multiplayer portions of those games (and others) will still be shut down after October 1 (except for VR title Space Junkies, which saw its online servers shut down today). Ubisoft says this is a decision "we do not take lightly, but it is also a necessity as the technology that drove those services becomes obsolete. We want our players to enjoy optimal gameplay experiences without things breaking, potentially subjecting players to crashes and security breaches."

The developers behind city-builder Anno 2070 weren't willing to let outdated servers impact their game, though. After the planned shutdown for the game's server was announced in July, Ubisoft Mainz responded by "dedicat[ing] some of our development resources to work on upgrading Anno 2070’s aged online services infrastructure to a new system."

On Wednesday, the team confirmed that the effort was successful and that a new, 64-bit version of the game coming in the next week "will allow [players] to continue to play the game past September 1 and hopefully for many more years to come." It will include full access to multiplayer functions and previous single-player progression, but the developers do warn that "we unfortunately can’t guarantee that old mods etc. are still working in this new version of Anno 2070."

"Tech obsolescence within the infrastructure of some of our legacy games is something we are keenly aware of, and our focus on remasters—such as Assassin's Creed III Remastered and the Anno History Collection—is a key part of our preservation efforts," Ubisoft wrote. "Our teams at Ubisoft are continuing to work hard to deliver the best experiences for players and want to thank you for dedicated support of our games both old and new.""

Source: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/09/ubisoft-delays-server-shutdowns-prevents-purchased-dlc-from-going-away/

"A quarter of employees who signed original open letter have subsequently quit.

"A Better Ubisoft", the internal group campaigning for improved working conditions at the French publisher, has said that its demands have not been met one year on from issuing an open letter decrying the publisher's work culture.

The letter was penned in solidarity (opens in new tab)with Activision/Blizzard employees, who were striking to protest the company's toxic culture of harassment and abuse. But the letter also called out similar problems at Ubisoft that were initially revealed in 2020. These included allegations of sexual assault and harassment against several high-ranking Ubisoft employees (opens in new tab), and a wider culture of ignoring or outright suppressing these problems that ran all the way up to the company's executives.

Last year's open letter claimed little had changed from 2020, despite assurances from Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot that he would "ensure that everyone…feels welcomed, respected, and safe." The letter stated "It has been over a year since the first revelations of systemic discrimination, harassment and bullying within Ubisoft came out," adding "We have seen nothing more than a year of kind words, empty promises, and an inability or unwillingness to remove known offenders."

Now another year has passed, and A Better Ubisoft is saying once again that nothing has been done. In a Twitter thread (opens in new tab) breaking down the situation, the organisation said that "none of our demands had been met." It also stated that "25%" of the letter's signatories had since quit Ubisoft, almost 40% of which were women. Since only a quarter of Ubisoft's staff are women to begin with, this means that Ubisoft is "massively disproportionately losing women who signed our open letter calling for more action to tackle abuse."

A better Ubisoft ended the thread by reiterating its demands, which are as follows:

Stop promoting and moving known offenders from studio to studio, team to team with no repercussions. This cycle needs to end.
We want a collective seat at the table, to have a meaningful say in how Ubisoft as a company moves forward from here.
Cross-industry collaboration, to agree on a set of ground rules and processes that all studios can use to handle these offences in the future.
This collaboration must heavily involve employees in non-management positions and union representatives."

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/one-year-on-a-better-ubisoft-says-none-of-its-demands-for-improving-workplace-culture-have-been-met/

"Ubisoft has announced that, effective September 1, it will be decommissioning the online features (opens in new tab) of a selection of older games. I've compiled a list of the PC games affected, their release dates, and what features will be removed below:

Anno 2070 (2011): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features
Assassin's Creed 2 (2009): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features
Assassin's Creed 3 (2012): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (2010): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
Assassin's Creed Liberation HD (2014): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access DLC
Driver San Francisco (2011): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
Far Cry 3 (2012): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (2010): co-op multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
Silent Hunter 5 (2010): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features, access to DLC
Space Junkies (2019): "As a multiplayer only title, you will be unable to play the game going forward."
Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2013): multiplayer, linking accounts, online features

Ubisoft states that "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." I'm certainly sympathetic to that argument—I doubt there's a ton of gamers out there still playing Splinter Cell: Blacklist's online multiplayer. Additionally, the remastered versions of listed games will be retaining online features.

However, cutting off DLC and, in one case, an entire game is troubling. Space Junkies, the multiplayer VR shooter, cost $40 at release and remains available for sale on Steam, with no notice that it will be rendered unplayable in two months.

If NFTs haven't been thoroughly debunked enough already, seeing Ubisoft completely end these services makes the company's Quartz NFT initiative even more absurd. What happens to that blockchain-backed investment once the game it's attached to shuts down, and the crypto booster pipe dream of a single NFT being used across multiple games never materialized?

This mass decommissioning also demonstrates the preservation issues inherent to walled garden online services. You can still enjoy online games significantly older than the ones listed thanks to their support for private servers. It's worth remembering that every live service game will one day stop getting official support and eventually shut down. Overwatch, Destiny, Ubisoft's own Rainbow Six Siege, there will come a point maybe years, maybe decades down the line when their servers are switched off and you won't be able to come back to them."

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/ubisoft-to-pull-online-from-older-games-which-also-takes-away-your-dlc/

"Ubisoft revealed its sales and earnings figures for the first half of 2019-20 financial year this week, revealing a massive 93 percent year-on-year decline in operating income.

In a press release, Ubisoft pinned the blame almost entirely on Ghost Recon: Breakpoint but it’s worth noting that The Division 2 didn’t meet sales expectations either. However, there was no mention of that in the financial report.

What Ubisoft did mention was strong performances by Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Rainbow Six Siege. According to the developer, the former saw a “further acceleration of the already very sharp increase delivered in the first quarter in terms of daily player engagement” and the latter boasts record monthly active users (MAUs). Expanding further on these two titles, Ubisoft noted that Assassin’s Creed Odyssey‘s player engagement and sell-through is much higher than Origins‘, and Rainbow Six Siege‘s MAUs were higher in Q2 2019 than Q2 2018. The hit Tom Clancy title has over 50 million registered players and saw a 27 percent viewership increase for its esports event, Six Major Raleigh.

Ubisoft’s CEO Yves Guillemot understandably wasn’t too critical of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint in public but we’ve heard reports that the company is now requiring “super unique” pitches from its development teams after the game’s disastrous performance, both critically and commercially. Ubisoft has also delayed three of its AAA titles (Gods & Monsters, Rainbow Six Quarantine, and Watch Dogs: Legion) in the aftermath, now aiming for cross-gen releases. With a new Assassin’s Creed on its way alongside the aforementioned titles, Ubisoft remains optimistic about the future."

Source: https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/ubisoft-first-half-operating-profit-down-by-93.html

What an injustice.

"Prominent cracking group Codex have once again shown that it's better to ship a living, breathing cop with a game than strap it with Denuvo's anti-tamper technology, as they managed to pinpoint the source of Injustice 2's graphics woes.

What they found however is the sort of thing that would make a development team facepalm until something turned red. Namely, the stuttering that occurs in Injustice 2 when using Robin and Gorilla is actually Denuvo's doing.

Since cracking of Denuvo doesn't entail breaking it, but rather fooling it, the cracked version of Injustice 2 suffers from slowdowns as well, which Codex says is "thanks to Denuvo and the devs."

Source: https://www.altchar.com/games-news/575399/cracking-group-traces-injustice-2-stutters-to-denuvo