In a now-deleted thread on the Splinter Cell Blacklist forum, customers were told that submitting a ticket would cause a seven-day ban and that anyone who tried to use an older client as a workaround would be permanently banned. The posting appeared to be from the Head of Customer Relationship Center, Tara Johnson Reichley.
Hello Splinter Cell Blacklist Fans,
It has been brought to my attention by one of our team leads here at Ubisoft Customer Support that many users have been reporting issues connecting with the Splinter Cell Blacklist services when attempting to access the multiplayer or cooperative features of the game.
Rest assured, we are aware of the issue. However, given the age of the game in question, and the relatively inactive player base, the game team has decided not to devote any further resources into rectifying this issue.
It is for this reason that I must ask you, our loyal players, to refrain from opening any further support tickets regarding this issue. My team and I have no input into the decision making process of the game teams, and by continuing to weigh down the support team with well-known and unsolvable issues only serves to prevent other innocent players from receiving the prompt problem solving they deserve.
Any support tickets submitted regarding this issue in the future will be met with a 7 day ban. During this period, you will be unable to make purchases through the Ubisoft store, log in to Ubisoft websites, log in to your Ubisoft account or play through the Ubisoft Connect client. However, you may still play offline. Customer support will not be able to lift this ban.
Further offenses will be met with a permanent ban.
In addition, any users found to be intentionally using an earlier version of Ubisoft Connect or Uplay launchers in order to workaround the issue will be banned. Older versions of Ubisoft Connect are no longer secure, and continuing to make use of them could result in security breaches to your Ubisoft account or Ubisoft as a whole.
Thank you for your understanding in this matter.
Fans were upset by this and took to social media to vent their outrage over the post. Numerous gaming sites reported on it, and within 24 hours, Kotaku was told by Ubisoft that the post was made by someone impersonating Tara Johnson Reichley. However, the thread was locked from replies and stickied, something only moderators, admins, or users with those privileges could do. The game’s online service has been failing almost monthly since the end of the summer. The workaround mentioned in the post is also in one of the the forum posts listed below.
- Splinter cell Blacklist service not available (September 2021)
- Servers shut down? (June 2021)
Things weren’t better in 2020, with one thread on Steam dating back to 2013 about server issues. Ubisoft has reportedly greenlit a new Splinter Cell game, leading some to speculate that the company is considering shutting down the servers for Blacklist.