Hardly a cause for celebration, but in what is becoming an almost annual event, Ubisoft has announced the server closure of older Ubisoft titles. In the past, Ubisoft has made such messaging somewhat confusing, giving players the false impression that the affected titles will be unplayable, but this time it has been made clear that the "discontinuation" will only affect the online aspects of these titles and that the single player elements will remain playable It is now clear that the "discontinuation" only affects the online aspect of these titles, and the single player elements will remain playable.

However, this language remains too euphemistic, and publishers still claim that these decisions are "necessary because the technology that drove these services has become obsolete." I don't buy that rationale, and would rather Ubisoft say, "Hey, no one plays this stuff anymore, and it costs money to keep it running, so sayonara," but perhaps the response to that would be worse.

The "discontinuance" will go into effect on January 25, 2024 and will affect games on PC and one Mac title as a reward (with a few Xbox 360 and PS3 games):

"Rest assured that the discontinuation of online services will only affect certain online features. Please be assured that the discontinuation of online services will only affect certain online features. Those who have purchased these games can continue to play them. Trials Evolution also, with all due respect, jumped out at me. In that case, the online features are leaderboards and the sharing of community pieces, especially since the latter is a big part of the game. At least there is a newer Trials game.

However, these are older titles, and while I enjoyed beating people up in the multiplayer mode of Assassin's Creed Liberation, it doesn't look like it will be a hotbed of players 12 years after its release.

All of these games are at least a decade old, and it's definitely time for Ubisoft to start thinking about ending support, and we're unlikely to see enough online activity to justify the cost of keeping servers active. There is something expressed in a 2019 multiplayer project called Dustnet. It is built around the idea of impermanence in the multiplayer gaming space, where all players are placed on a "final" de_dust2 server where they can be added or created. However, if that server becomes vacant, everything is erased. That is still going on. Next year, unfortunately, the same cannot be said about these Ubisoft games.