this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023

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Ubisoft is stopping online services for 10 titles, including several Assassin's Creed games | Time to say goodbye (www.techradar.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Ubisoft is stopping online services for 10 titles, including several Assassin's Creed games | Time to say goodbye::Ubisoft is ending online services for various titles, including Assassin's Creed 2, Brotherhood, and Liberation.

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[–] [email protected] 149 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Companys should only be able to maintain copyright as long as the product still works as originally sold. When companies stop supporting those products, they should be compelled to open source the server code, so that the community can take it over. This should be something enforced by either the library of Congress, or copyright law itself...

[–] [email protected] 43 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

In my opinion they should also be giving refunds to everyone who bought the game and now can't play it.

If you can't keep an online service running, then you shouldn't be selling games with an online service. If the community can take it over, that's awesome. But they might not and customers shouldn't have to rely on that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Online features, like the Brotherhood multiplayer, or those annoying older ads to use the mobile app while playing. The game itself can still be played.

[+] [email protected] -30 points 9 months ago (2 children)

While my first thought was agreeing with you, I had a think and I disagree.

I brought game xyz to enjoy it, not to keep it forever. Ubisoft isn't going to take back that feeling of the first leap of faith, the time spent exploring the Caribbean, my sadness at watching ezio lose his family, find out that he never got to understand why or the sadness of not giving Leonardo DaVinci a hug by pushing the wrong button.... or my constant desire to look at every building and think how to climb it. I get to keep that. Its like going to buy a good meal - I don't want it forever and don't expect a refund if I go to pick it up again after 10 years.

Saying that, I would expect games to remain playable locally and not disappear completely if I can't connect to the internet. Put out a patch so it doesn't need to connect and let it go.

Even better- keep one server up and make a classic store. There are soo many games i played as a teen i would love to share with my kids, and possibly grandkids in 10-15 years.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You bring up a good argument. We can't compel creators to maintain their creations.

But looking at the philosophy behind both patents, and copyright, the theory is by allowing artists and creators to monetize their labor, we enrich all of society by creating more value over the long term. But if the creations are ephemeral and disappear, society's not actually benefiting.

It's a bit of a stretch, but imagine if literature disappeared after 15 years, so that nobody could read a text once it's old enough. We would have lost their creativity of the ages, mathematical, philosophical, engineering, historical treatise. We would have a massive gap in the knowledge of the world.

DRM, and online only platforms, are only going to become more common, so we have to examine what's the benefit of giving people exclusive rights to creations from a society's perspective... And I would say the exclusive rice are in exchange for the creation benefiting humanity after a period of time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I do love when people submit opposition views without the sc-reeeeeee-ming match this place comes with.

My arguement back is that in this case the content creator didn't/wasnt focused on entertainment, not long term advancement of society. Knowledge gained from development, society reaction and the change in society values and tastes should remain and be passed down - but we don't need to keep every magazine, vine/tok/tweet/video game. Books pass knowledge and it would be horrible to lose them after 15 years but entertainment doest carry the same value to progress.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

I see what you're saying, but I'm on the fence, even for entertainment. All of Shakespeare's works, are a form of entertainment, a base form of entertainment for the rabble even. But they've proven through an accident of history to have huge impacts today.

DRM platforms for scholastic texts for research publications for conference panels exist in abundance, and are only going to become more popular.

I think a reasonable split would be saying that you lose copyright when the original content is no longer active. A book is forever active, so the copyright exists for however long the law currently stipulates - 70 years?

For DRM content, including forced online games, I'm not saying the original creator needs to maintain anything, but if they don't, the copyright should be on an accelerated expiration schedule.

I might be mullified, if electronic creators, have to file the source, the build objects, for electronic things, with a independent library. To follow the normal copyright expiration. That way it would break out of the shell of whatever the DRM enclave is after the 70 years or whatever.

If we examine the mission of the British library, they often talk about they don't know what's going to be critically important in the future, so they have to preserve everything. And I think that's a reasonable position.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I brought game xyz to enjoy it, not to keep it forever.

If you can't keep it forever, you didn't buy it - as in take ownership of it - you just rented it.

[+] [email protected] -11 points 9 months ago (2 children)

No, I brought it to consume it - it gave me enjoyment and filled its job.

I don't get to keep every piece of food I buy and keep eating it over and over, like how I never get to explore games for the first time. I don't get a refund on a game once I finish it because I no longer get that initial wave of excitement and wonder.

These games have been out for 10 years - if you didn't get the value out of it in that time you never were going to.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

games aren't food, they don't expire or disappear when you eat them, they aren't even subject to physical degradation they're files. As long as somebody has a copy of the files they can exist.

A company should have no fucking business removing the ability to play something that I legally own from me. I bought the game I get to use it for as long and as many times as I want. Don't want to keep running the server infrastructure forever? Fine, give me the tools to host the game's server myself. Don't want to do that? Ok, don't make a game that requires it. Don't wanna do that either? Then don't sell games.

Even if it were just 10 people wanting it, it costs the company absolutely nothing to allow them to keep playing their game on a server they host (at no expense for the company).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

These games have been out for 10 years - if you didn't get the value out of it in that time you never were going to.

I regularly play games older than 10 years. Heck, I even sometimes play games as old as 30 years. Who are you to tell me how long I should enjoy a game for?

[–] [email protected] 80 points 9 months ago (3 children)

While it's sad to see all these games begin to die a slow death, in reality, many of these titles are incredibly old and on last-gen platforms such as Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

Yet much older games are still playable without functionality loss.

You don't need upgrades to online services. You need to stop locking down games.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago

incredibly old

Xbox 360 or PlayStation 4

😭

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

But then how will we get people to play our shittier new games??

[–] Kecessa 3 points 9 months ago

Heck, I haven't checked in a couple of years, but I think the Call of Duty servers for the Wii were still up back in 2020...

[–] [email protected] 50 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm not too upset about companies shutting down their online infrastructure for a game after 10 years...

What I am upset about is how many games nowadays don't allow for direct connection or self-hosting which renders all multiplayer functionality moot unless someone can hack it in.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

I think there should be laws forcing companies to publish the server software, if and when they don't want to run the servers themselves (absolutely understandably as you said)

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

With all of these games, players will no longer be able to use multiplayer modes, link Ubisoft accounts in-game, or use any other online features. In addition to this, any Ubisoft Connect rewards will be made unavailable.

So Singleplayer will continue to work?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

In theory, yes. However last time I tried Assassin's Creed 1 (I think about 3 years ago now), it crashed at startup trying to reach a service that no longer existed. I had to disconnect the network, start the game, then reconnect. After this it worked fine.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Why does assassin creed 2 need internet? It's a single player game

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Good. Get rid of that ubisoft account crap.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

You don’t say 🏴‍☠️

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

ITT: ignorant people that didn't frickin' read the article or even tried to understand the post title, it clearly states they're stopping online services, not making your single player games unplayable, so there's no reason for piracy here, not mentioning that pirated copies mostly don't support online services anyway