Ubisoft clarified the reason behind the decision to put offline Assassin's Creed Liberation DLC, among other games.

Last week, Ubisoft announced that it will be stopping support for online functionalities for some of their titles, which include older Assassin's Creed games like Brotherhood and Liberation. Apart from this, Ubisoft revealed that access to the DLC for these titles will also no longer be available starting September 1, 2022.

However, some users also noted that the Steam product pages for games like Assassin's Creed Liberation showed that the games will no longer be available to purchase, and will no longer be accessible even for those who already purchased the game. This caused some outroar from fans, decrying how Ubisoft is taking away access to games that they've actually already bought.

Ubisoft then released a statement to clarify that this isn't the case – DLCs that have already been bought will continue to be available for download for those who have already purchased them, as do the games that have already been purchased or added to their libraries. Ubisoft also further justified the decision to put offline functionalities of some of their older titles:

“We are constantly assessing what’s needed to deliver the best possible online services for Ubisoft’s players. Shutting the services for some older games with smaller online audiences is a necessary part of this process, since it allows our IT and service staff to better focus on delivering great online experiences to the vast majority of players who are enjoying newer, more popular titles. Still, we don’t take the decision to retire services for older Ubisoft games lightly, and we understand some players may be disappointed by this news. We are humble to have fans that are as committed as they have been to these brands and titles, and we hope that they will find more recent or upcoming Ubisoft games which they can be equally as passionate about. We thank them for their understanding and their support.

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 September 1st, 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.

With regards considerations that go into the decision making process and data, the factors that come into play are multiple and can vary from one game to another. For legacy games, we always look at whether we are using the best and latest technology available to support our players’ online experience, and if we still have the in-house tech expertise to maintain online services so they meet our quality and stability standards.”

We noted in our previous article that these decisions usually come from the need to clear up data and bandwidth so that those developers could better support their more active communities. While it's very unfortunate that these services will no longer be offered, it's at least now clear that Ubisoft will not be retracting access to games from those who already purchased them come September 1, 2022.