Maybe it's just me but it seems to me that Ubisoft really HATE this game. According to interviews with the designer, the game only barely even got greenlit for development by Ubi (and eeveen then it only got a very small budget). And it was only like a couple of year after it was released that Ubi pulled the plug on updates, stating firmly that the game would NEVER receive anymore updates (even though it was always poorly optimized and still had bugs). And now they have made it almost impossible to buy it anymore.

Why does Ubisoft hate Might & Magic? Is it because it's an old-school RPG and not another shitty casual Assassin's Creed sequel?

Pulling it from the store because they don't want to support it any longer is one thing. Shutting down servers necessary to unlock in-game content and DLC is a problem in itself. The really big issue is that without access to unlockable content you can't progress and that is the biggest issue of them all.

They, meaning UBI, can't even fix that mess by issuing a patch to unlock the content, DLC, achievements and what not. Reason being that they broke up with Limbic after the debacle with HoMM 7. Without them this is a broken game now which will never find its way to GOG - sad as it is, because this was one I had hoped for would be sold here DRM free.

M&M X being one of those cases where a game not only needs the Steam client but also an active Ubisoft account is also part of the problem. Had there been a native Steam version the game + DLC would still be intact and would have remained in a playable state.

A dire warning not to buy any games necessitating not only Steam but also EA or Ubisoft accounts on top of that. Concerns about ownership or accessibility in case the company that's sold you the game aside, there is in this case no way to backup all your files to at least be able to keep playing should this most unfortunate event occur.

That's maybe also a great case to point to people so eager to have achievements in games and clients to start games with that that's what's going to happen and they can do j*s*t about it when everything's gone and content no longer available. It's also why this idea to have GOG clients and achievements and shop integrations isn't a good idea. There is any number of games with achievements and need for the client to play them online. GOG decides to pull? Bye bye everything except your base games and what you purchased, which, to GOG's credit will still always work. It's only adding to the other problems like developers not caring for their product, selling it here, not patching it, having the game removed you are left with: A broken game basically because all the great patches are available, just not here, but on Steam.

I guess the takeaway lesson here is to be more selective which games you buy so you don't run into any such problems. Convincing UBI, EA, GOG, Epic or whatever other shop you can think of to change their ways, this isn't going to work. When games aren't sold developers will eventually realize which way they had best avoid to head in to stay alive. With relevant masses buying without concern this remains wishful thinking. :-)

Quiet you, MMX was a decent dungeon crawler.

then why was it mostly negative?

It doesn't have radio towers you can climb

Because Steam reviewers are fags.

Edit: But seriously, the game is solid, it's not as good as any of the old NWC M&M games (MM9 excluded) but it's a decent dungeon crawler. The problem is that it has some design flaws which at first glance might not seem that important, actually have massive detrimental effect on the game, the lack of respawning enemies and poor class balance the most obvious. But yeah playing as a ranged attack party is extremely painful, melee characters are better in every way.

It was mostly positive until recent review bombing since DRM broke game.

It being linear and the rather small areas to explore, in comparison to the old M&M games anyways, doesn't really lend itself for re-spawning enemies or an extensive amount. I'm thinking of the 2 and 3 with hundreds of enemies in a single encounter. In X it would have caused some additional balancing issues. With more items to render it would have aggravated the performance problems even further. Courtesy: Unity engine 4.0 At least Limbic managed to solve this problem.

As far as character and enemy balancing is concerned it could have been way better. If on the other hand you don't mind looking past some of these issues and if you are further willing to use one of only a small number of working race/archetype combinations Limbic had in mind for us to play, it's been a decent game which at least I had some fun playing.

For a more old-school M&M experience there's Legends of Amberland to be had. Judging it the same way as X, it also got no re-spawning enemies, spikes in difficulty, but it's entertaining all the same. :-)

Actually, achievements can also be made to not need a net connection(i.e. "baking them into the game").....although doing means (iirc) that people cannot share them while offline.

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Well there are some ways to continue playing some games one has bought after such things happen, but they're not exactly legal.
(i.e. sailing the high seas and taking the y'argh matey route)

It was removed because it's broken. The only unknown is if this is temporarily until will be fixed or permanently.

As for source code and other things I wouldn't be so sure. This game's development was entirely outsourced to external studio which doesn't exist anymore and project manager is not working in Ubisoft anymore.

Yar har fideldidy being a <censored> is our way to be, being a <censored> makes free, you are a <censored>

Joking aside, yes, this is about the only way when it happens. Still you'd get less that what you paid for meaning achievements, server access so on so forth. At least you can still play the games, most of them, at least. With MM X this isn't possible without hacking it by changing some files to be able to continue playing past certain points otherwise becoming plot-stoppers soft-locking your game. Since Ubisoft and Limbic parted ways after their HoMM 7 debacle, Ubisoft finds they are unable to patch it. Limbic are the only ones and they can't for obvious reason.

M&M X isn't the only game that's going to suffer that fate and there isn't going to be a bay to acquire a fully functioning product, tied to a certain account, tied to a launcher, tied to another launcher, that - once you jumped thru all those hoops you earned the right to execute your copy on that machine of yours. ;-)

My main problems with MMX's mechanics are as follows:
- The lack of any front and back -line, to put your fighters in the front and ranged attackers at the rear. Not having a front/back-line wasn't a big deal in MM 6-9 because it was real-time so you could do all sorts of cheasy things to the AI, but MMX is a grid-based, turn-based blobber. So squishy ranged/magic attackers can get brutalized in close combat and there's nothing you can do about it. Even worse, enemies can ambush you and attack your party via the squares at your sides and from behind. MMX is full of these unavoidable ambushes. You NEED a party in which all four characters can hold their own in close combat and wear decent armor, so really squishy ranged characters are not viable, Paladin is probably the best class because it can fight in close-combat and also cast spells.

- Now all that would be FINE if the game had a way for the player to make up for a weaker party build by doing a little old grinding, get up a few levels so some of those tough fights aren't as deadly. But the game has no way to get additional XP beyond the initial creature spawns. Once you've finished a map and cleared out all the monsters, those monsters will never respawn. It's really perplexing why the devs wanted to so tightly control how much XP the player gets.

They've been doing this since 2009, and it was worse back then from what I heard that you have to have a constant internet connection to play Assassin's Creed 2 as if this was an MMORPG.

Do I have to spell it out? They shut down the DRM servers the game required to run properly and they aren't willing to put in the time and resources to fix this, so they pulled the game. They took the money and ran. It's bad enough that Steam wouldn't remove a "broken by design" game out of their own volition.

Oh, so the actual news here is they pulled the game from all stores because it no longer works? It's dead?