Ubisoft pulled a classic big publisher move recently by announcing that servers of many older games would be shut down, leaving the various online components of those titles dead, but now one will escape that fate in the form of Anno 2070.

In an update about the game from a small crew dedicated to saving it over the last few months since the closures were announced, it has been revealed that the various modes and elements of the game that required the servers in the past have been updated to survive.

“We started with Anno 2070’s singleplayer (campaign, sandbox, missions) as well as special features (the Ark, world events, the voting system and achievements), then tackled the multiplayer (regular versus mode, coop mode and domination mode) and the migration of player progression (old savegames, existing Ark with its items),” the update reads.

“Today, we are happy to announce that we’ll be able to release an update to Anno 2070, that will allow you to continue to play the game past September 1st and hopefully for many more years to come.”

That 1st September date was supposed to be when the Ubisoft servers went down. The publisher has recently pushed this date to 1st October leaving more time for players to enjoy what they can and, hopefully, more changes like these for Anno 2070.

On 6th September Anno 2070 will go into maintenance mode and player progression will be moved to this new version of the game. This process will take around 24 hours to complete with 7th September at 06:00 UCT+2 listed as the exact moment the community can jump back in.

All of this may seem odd for a city builder from 2011, but it seems both the developers (Blue Byte and Related Designs) as well as the community care enough about it to not let it go.

Even for those uninterested in actually playing the game, projects like this are important for the sake of preservation.

Not only will Anno 2070 keep on trucking, but it should work better than ever thanks to the fact that it was also ported to become a 64 bit app.

“…your experience should even be a bit smoother now than before: We ported the game to 64bit, which enables the game to address all your PC’s memory. Additionally, the new online services should make for a nicer matchmaking experience. And you can still use the in-game friendslist to set up matches,” the announcement continues.

For more about the other Ubisoft games which will be “decommissioned”, as the publisher spins it, see the dedicated page here.