Ubisoft announced last week that it’s pulling the plug on online support (opens in new tab) for a number of its older games, including multiple Assassin’s Creeds, Driver San Francisco, Far Cry 3, and several others. But Ubisoft Mainz, the studio behind the city-sim strategy game Anno 2070 (opens in new tab)—which is also on the list of games losing online support—isn’t letting it go without a fight.
“After an initial investigation, we have decided to dedicate some of our development resources to work on upgrading Anno 2070’s aged online services infrastructure to a new system, so that these features can continue to be used past the mentioned date,” the studio said in an update (opens in new tab) posted shortly after Ubisoft’s shutdown announcement. “However, we cannot yet guarantee that we’ll be able to successfully upgrade/replace the old services as we’d like to.”
No promises, then, but it’s a shot, and probably a good one: If Batman: Arkham Origins (opens in new tab) players can restore that game’s online functionality years after it was closed by Warner, then surely the studio that actually makes Anno 2070 can figure out how to keep the wheels turning in the two months before services are actually shuttered.
Anno 2070 has been out for more than a decade now, and some might say that’s enough time for fans to get their fill. But strategy games tend to have long tails and dedicated fans, and some players are pushing back: A couple of responses to the Ubisoft Mainz post reminisced about still playing Anno 2070 from their original disc-based copies, while another wrote, “Before anyone says that 10 years is a huge length of time, it honestly isn’t.”
Predictably, there’s also a call for review-bombing on Steam—there’s definitely a visible backlash (opens in new tab) there, but the raw numbers are so small (10 negative reviews since July 2) to really count as a “bombing.”
For now, Ubisoft Mainz reminded players that Anno 2070’s online functionality will continue to operate normally until September 1. More details on what’s happening with the game will be provided “in the coming weeks and months.”
