Listen, I’m no landlubber but, truthfully, me timbers be shiverin'. That’s becauserecent updates to the Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag Steam pagelists features that aren’t currently in the game. That wouldn’t seem like a bad thing in isolation — old games are updated with new features all the time — but given that a remake ofBlack Flaghas been heavily rumored for a while, it looks like Ubisoft may be preparing to delist the original game, replacing it with the new version.
This is what happened withAssassin’s Creed 3when Ubisoft launched a remaster back in 2019. The new and improved version replaced the older one onSteam, locking new players out from ever purchasing the original game, unless they can hunt down a physical copy. This doesn’t delete the original for Steam users who already own it, but it does limit the number of players who can experience it going forward.
A Remaster May Be Incredibly Similar, But It Isn’t The Original Game
This is a problem because, while these two games might have the same name (give or take a “Remastered” at the end of the title), they aren’t actually the same game. Assassin’s Creed 3 Remastered isn’t unanimously considered the best version of the game and a quick perusal of thisReddit threadconfirms that, as recently as two years ago, players were still frustrated with its changes to the original’s lighting and its general bugginess. Not everyone in that thread hates the remaster, but enough have issues with it that it really seems like new buyers would benefit from an option to go with the original.
It also highlights one underdiscussed issue with replacing an established game with a remaster: you’re swapping out a game that has had years of patches and stabilization with a new release that simply can’t have had that same time and attention paid to it.
Replacing old games with remasters isn’t necessarily a common practice. But we’ve seen it enough that the problems have become clear. Sometimes a remaster is well-liked enough (likeDark Souls Remastered), but it seems like just as often an inferior version of the game is forced on players.Warcraft 3: Reforgedis the only version of the iconic RTS that you can currently play on PC — unless you have a physical copy of the original or, just as rare, a computer with a disc drive — and fans hated the changes Blizzard made to the game.Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Editionwas roundly rejected by critics and players, but it’s still the only version of the PS2 classic that you can play on modern hardware.
Sequels that do this are even worse.Overwatch 2replacingOverwatchis inexcusable.
Stop Killing Games (Then Bringing Them Back To Life As A Weird Clone)
I’m thinking about this more than usual because ofStop Killing Games, the initiative dedicated to preventing publishers from destroying games once they’ve outlived their usefulness. This strikes me as a similar kind of planned obsolescence. Publishers don’t want to see sales diverted from a more expensive new product to a less expensive old product, so they simply remove the choice from consumers. It’s gross, and any company that cares about its history would make both versions available.
Of course, we don’t know that Ubisoft is planning to replace Black Flag with a remastered version. It could just be improving the original. But, if I were a betting man, I’d make sure I had the original in my Steam library sooner rather than later.
