Ascension offline next New Year’s Eve

After some sort of split between the developer and publisher of Ascension — I couldn’t care less about the particulars — the game will stop working online after next year. You’ll be able to play against the AI, which is missing a setting that I’m guessing will still be missing when the game is switched off next year. But as a multiplayer game, it will cease to exist. It will be effectively EA’ed. From a press release you can read here:

When Stone Blade Entertainment launches Ascension Online on iOS (currently scheduled for July of 2014), Playdek’s Ascension iOS app will be removed from the app store, but Playdek will continue to support online play through the remainder of 2014.

In other words, the developer (Stone Blade Entertainment is the new name for Ascension developer Gary Games) will sell you their game a second time, but the game you already bought will no longer work online. Yet another nail in the coffin of the olden days when you could buy a game and be reasonably assured that it was yours to play in perpetuity.