VG247: "It’s been five years since the last home console instalment in the Driver franchise. Even so, Driver: San Francisco picks up the narrative from the older – and awkwardly titled – third instalment, Driv3r, which was released in 2004 to critical reception that ranged from lukewarm to stone cold. But in this age of the BAFTA award winning Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and with several entries in the MotorStorm series in the intervening years, is the Driver brand still relevant?
Ubisoft Reflections’ attempt to push the franchise back to the forefront of the gamer consciousness sees the return of popular protagonist Tanner and his nemesis Jericho. The narrative picks up around six months after the end of Driv3r, where it’s revealed that both men survived the shootout that provided the game’s climax."
Game Designer Andrew Willans looks back at Driver: San Francisco’s legacy.
Now we get The Crew games instead 🙄
Would love and much prefer a sequel to this.
Ubisoft seems to have teased a new Driver game, with the company's CEO pointing to various projects being in development.
Immersed Gamer writes: "Ubisoft came out with the announcement that some of their classic titles are shutting down their servers. While this is not entirely surprising, the next bit is quite shocking. As Ubisoft states in regard to many of said classic games, “additionally, the installation and access to DLC will be unavailable”.
The wording is a little vague, so the actual paid DLC could be safe. But it doesn’t change the fact that multiplayer modes of Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Rayman Legends, and Driver San Francisco will surely be missed. Especially since no alternative exists in many of those cases. This happens to unveil right next to our story where I essentially beg Atlus to port SMT to modern consoles alongside Persona.
Seems like videogame preservation is on the down-low…"
Reports say that they might continue to do an Ubisoft in the near future. Dreadful.
Why would DLC stop working, because it requires a server for authentication?
Publishers need to find technical and legal solutions so that any digital product a user owns always works.
@VenomUK From what I remember replaying the Assassin's Creed II and Brotherhood, there were plenty of mission DLCs you had to download via UPlay. I think they are completely disconnecting UPlay from those games, thus you won't be able to download the DLCs.
I'm guessing obviously. And even that explanation just doesn't make much sense to me. Why would they just remove UPlay support for these games? Why will those single-player DLCs become unavailable? Which DLCs in particular? I truly can't wrap my head around what Ubisoft means by this mess. We will either have to wait and see, or someone will pressure Ubi via social media to make some statement explaining.
All hail the future of all digital games.
I would like to hear the excuses from the all digital future defenders about this
Who’s playing any of these old garbage DLC’s/online modes in 2022?
This literally has zero to do with digital games and is really just an Ubisoft issue. Either way, most people will tell you that "all digital" is not the future. Digital and physical should always be options.
@ notorious
🤦🏿 "Ubisoft came out with the announcement that some of their classic titles are shutting down their servers. While this is not entirely surprising, the next bit is quite shocking. As Ubisoft states in regard to many of said classic games, “additionally, the installation and access to DLC will be unavailable”.
What part of that makes it zero to do with digital today is Ubisoft tomorrow can be any game that’s digital only or have DLC from any publisher but hey whatever helps you sleep, remember kid the older your favorite digital games get the closer they’re to the big shutdown 🤷🏿
They are shutting down multiplayer for PS3 games that nobody is playing. If you owned a physical copy, you'd also be affected? It has nothing to do with digital.
Presumably for the DLC, you'll still have access to it if you've previously purchased it. And if you're upset that you haven't already got the DLC for ACII, then I don't know what to say.. you've had 15 years to buy it.
Of course, we'd all love for everything to always be available and despite what you may think, I'm not really defending this - but maintaining multiplayer serves for games from two generations ago that literally nobody is playing takes up resources. And energy. And right now, that is very expensive. I guess the solution should be allowing console gamers to run their own servers.
Please tell me which part of this: "additionally, the installation and access to DLC will be unavailable” doesn't affect their physical games. None. It affects all of their games equally.
"the older your favorite digital games get the closer they’re to the big shutdown"
Funny, because I haven't lost a single digital title yet. I guess the big shutdown only actually shut down one digital game.
And you want us to go all digital? This is the bull sh*t that makes me apprehensive to an all digital future. You corpo guys don’t understand game preservation or it’s importance.
Its all about the £££££ and if they can sell you the same item multiple times over... Also physical or digital makes no difference these days sadly because if you buy physical you only get 1/2 the data needed to actually start the game nevermind play it
Companies who withdraw support should be legally made to patch games to enable the 'owner' to create and host their own MP lobbies. This is theft
Unfortunately we've allowed corporations to hold too much power and we don't own half of what we buy. The correct thing to do when shutting down servers, or better yet include it from the beginning, is to make it possible to access what we originally bought. This won't change until they're forced to cause greedy people don't like doing the right thing unless they have some incentive.
We don't own anything. The company makes a product and asks for a one-time fee to give you a licence to access it. You agree to the terms that they can revoke that licence at any time for any reason. This is 'digital ownership.'
Maybe people should read some of what they blindly click to agree to.
Too bad they got rid of the on-foot sections. And Driv3r was as bad as people made it out to be.
So this is actually a sequell to Driv3r instead being an reboot.
I think a reboot would be better because the old Tanner i knew didnt had nothing to do with this one.