I guess the only choice now is to just get the pirated version, as that's the only version that works properly!

so mostly negative is deserved
why would anyone want to buy a broken game

Poor show Ubisoft.

Note that EA is pretty much in the same situation with Titanfall. Apparently, for the past few months a single "hacker" killed the game's servers, which is only playable online, but EA doesn't give a damn and continues to sell a completely unserviceable game.

They are geniuses, they are practically doing a legalized scam, as they know that the percentage of people who refund the games is always very low despite all the complaints.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1454890/Titanfall/

This is so disturbing. Yet more evidence that people really need to start taking DRM-free seriously... Screw Ubisoft.

Ubisoft has always been the Archdemon of DRM as far as I'm concerned, remember it was Assassin Creed PC which was one of if not the first PC game to have always-online DRM (as well as horrid servers for authentication so players would be often locked out of their own game). They have always had a seething hatred to PC gaming as well (as you can tell by all the terrible PC ports they've done).

To continue selling it, they would need to patch out now disabled server authentications. It doesn't only prevent the use of bought DLC, it also prevents the players from moving to chapter 2. Now, people can advance in-game, if they are willing to modify the game files, but let's face it: if you buy a game, you should not have to do anything of the sort. Pulling the game from Steam was the easiest and the cheapest option for Ubi.

It's an eX-game!

Ubisoft: "piracy kills our games"!
Also Ubisoft: kills its games
Pirates: keep the same games on life support.

HARD LOGIC HERE, UBISOFT.

Quickly checking, at least there appears to be an "abandonware" version of the game online, so I presume someone have already fixed the issue of not being able to move beyond chapter 2 and whatever issues there may be.

The problem is at least I am reluctant to try out modified versions by Russian and North Korean hackers, not knowing what exactly they have modified (malware warning), even if I didn't have any moral objections to use such a version. But I guess Ubisoft could contact those sea pirates to use their cracked version for a repackaged DRM-free version. I don't think it is unheard of that old classics have been re-published and sold using some existing cracks...

Lol.

First EA removes Syndicate Wars from legal distribution, then Ubisoft kills their Uplay-only game, instead of bothering to fix it. Which big company will be the next to remove a game of theirs from digital stores? Activision, Bethesda, 2K? Place your bets!

most of their games are pretty good

I have a hunch that it has recent (last 30 days) user rating of 9% because Ubi messed up real bad even by corporate standards and users wanted to express their disdain towards Ubi for breaking the servers/drm/game they paid for, or potentially even warn others from purchase of a now-broken product - at least initially before it got pulled. Doesn't necessarily make the game itself bad.
If you just glance over things like recent rating and then proceed to quickly judge anything by saying stuff like "looks like it was a very bad game - glad they removed it - it should never come to gog store" without seeing the whole picture, you aren't doing yourself any favors here really, to put it mildly.