[UPDATE] Ubisoft clarifies stance on delisted games; owners will still be able to redownload them after servers go offline
"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 1st September, 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."
ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Ubisoft has pulled three games from sale on Steam, adding a notice to the store page that they would be "inaccessible" after September 1, 2022. The first title, Space Junkies, is a multiplayer-only title, so online services being decommissioned and these games becoming inaccessible isn't exactly rare. However, the other two games - Assassin's Creed Liberation HD and Silent Hunter 5 - are exclusively single player.
Typically, when a game is pulled from digital storefronts, anyone who owns it can still redownload it freely. However, the extra notice that these titles will be "inaccessible" after September 1 has users concerned they will be unable to download them again. A page on Ubisoft's website about games being decommissioned in September of 2022 warns that "the installation and access to DLC will be unavailable" for these games, which could suggest it won't be available in any way.
That warning also appears on the entries for several other games - Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Blacklist, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, the non-remastered release of Far Cry 3 and the non-remastered release of Assassin's Creed III - but the Steam pages for those games have different information. Tom Clancy, Prince of Persia, Far Cry 3 and Brotherhood say that DLC and online elements will become unavailable as of September 1, though the base game will remain accessible, again implying that the base game will no longer be available for games that don't carry that stipulation. Assassin's Creed III, meanwhile, only mentions that it will no longer be available for sale, with no mention of loss of access to DLC or online elements.
The move has drawn widespread criticism from the community who see it as an unprecedented anti-consumer move, especially since, according to SteamDB, Liberation HD was on sale just a few weeks ago up until its delisting.
As reported by Destructoid, Ubisoft issued the following statement to multiple news outlets: “We don’t take the decision to retire services for older Ubisoft games lightly. Our teams are currently assessing all available options for players who will be impacted when these games’ online services are decommissioned on September 1st, 2022.”
