Uplay Vs Ubisoft Connect

Welcome to the world's most useless contest.

Though, the title of this article really isn't about evaluating which software is better, but instead, what role each software plays.

See, Ubisoft Connect, I at first believe to be purely a rebranding effort.

It was rather anticlimactic to install this NEW PIECE OF SOFTWARE, that upon launching, looks exactly the same as the last, with all of its bad layouts, slow response, and lack of features compared to the competition.

However, it's hidden something that I didn't put the pieces on until recently, and frankly, I should've put them together a long time ago. How much of that stems from my incompetence, or just my apathy towards Ubisoft and not paying attention to what they say and do, I'll let you decide.

For those that don't know, Ubisoft announced recently that they're shutting down the online services for fifteen games.

Now, that's quite bizarre list...

Single player games?

A game that wasn't available (Driver SF)?

A three year old VR game with bots?

It's especially strange when you consider some of the "online services" are just DLC. 

This isn't a list that pertains to a particular franchise or time of date. Sure, some of them are older, but others aren't, and one of the oldest of the bunch is a driving game that you couldn't buy on storefronts eons ago.

There's another piece to this though.

All of these games have some type of connection to Uplay, Ubisoft's original attempt at making a steam like software, even though they were also selling their games on steam. Naturally, it caused nothing but problems.

I remember multiple stories from back in the day of Uplay just repeatedly establishing itself as the most useless piece of software on the market. There were big stories like when a global outage of Ubisoft's servers meant that only pirates could play all of the games avail be on Uplay, and smaller ones like a particular bug with Watch Dogs at launch which meant people who bought it on Steam could play the game whereas those who bought it on Uplay couldn't, even though Steam still runs through Uplay.

In a perfect world, I'd be celebrating the demise of this program, but the problem is that all of its games are using servers that Ubisoft Connect doesn't have.

In order to prepare myself for hosting multiplayer sessions before September 1st, I had to install the last version of Uplay available on the web, log in, get an error message saying that it's outdated, yet never the less, starts up when I run games that were released pre-Ubisoft Connect.

Though the two pieces of software might look identical, in reality, the two are housing different online infrastructures.

Of course, Ubisoft moved over the most popular games like Rainbow Six Siege over to Ubisoft Connection, however, for the games that aren't still receiving support or didn't have the presence on PC to continuously earn revenue, Ubisoft is saying fuck it, and leaving all of them all out to dry.

There's some hope…

Driver San Francisco already has a 3rd Party client called Alcatraz that replaces the game's Ubisoft servers with its own, and Ubisoft Mainz themselves are attempting to move Anno 2070's infrastructure to something that can continue before Ubisoft's deadline.

"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."

I think it says a lot that a Ubisoft developer is racing against Ubisoft to save the game they were funded by Ubisoft to make.