Ubisoft reportedly deleting customer accounts with purchased games if they have been inactive for too long

aswz@lemmy.world to Games@lemmy.world – 1059 points –
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Michael @LegacyKillaHD

This is just horrifying.

Ubisoft CONFIRMS they will delete your account & purchased games if you go inactive for too long!!!

Ubisoft.. WTF?! Another example of why I'm becoming more & more concerned with the death of physical games.

https://twitter.com/LegacyKillaHD/status/1682653876418224129

Ubisoft Support @UbisoftSupport

Hey there. We just wanted to chime in that you can avoid the account closure by logging into your account within the 30 days (since receiving the email pictured) and selecting the Cancel Account Closure link contained in the email. We certainly do not want you to lose access to your games or account so if you have any difficulties logging in then please create a support case with us. >> ubisoft.com/help

https://twitter.com/UbisoftSupport/status/1682046437834784768

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"We certainly do not want you to lose access to your games or account"

So why do this? Corporate greed.

I don't even see how greed motivates this. I can't think of anyone that would go back to Ubisoft games after being locked out. Even assuming they were the scummiest of publishers, how does this give them anything other than bad press and sworn-off customers?

They're hoping this will actually entice people to come back. Following that "get people in the door first and then worry about what you'll sell them" business model, it's the same logical reason that Costco has super cheap hot dogs that they lose money on, and Epic Games has free games every week. It's just to get you to into a position where you can be marketed to.

That's the more "amicable" business strategy though. The more sinister possibility is, well, a constantly running app (the Ubisoft launcher is configured to start on boot by default, and even if you turn that off it spawns a background process as soon as you click on it at least till you reboot), always online with full user permissions and filesystem access is a very powerful thing, you've gotten yourself a pretty capable Trojan virus that people are willingly installing and granting whatever permissions you need! Plenty of Windows users are also in the habit of using the admin user with system access for literally everything, which makes it even easier for them to exploit.

They can't even show me the store on a language I want to see it in. They just arbitrarily decide I should be looking at it in french. Despite having my profile specify English. Despite having my entire launcher on English. French is the only language I'm allowed to see the store in.

And they wonder why i never buy shit from their store....

Getting people to come inside and have a look is a good strategy if they can make sense of what you're selling and under which conditions. Entering a shop with shiny pictures and everything explained in Arabic means I won't be spending money there as I can't figure out under which conditions I'm buying anything.

I get this all the time in Switzerland, with just about every online portal / service.

It's pot-luck if I actually can get something in ENGLISH that the UI is set to.

SAMSUNG - Always in German Microsoft - Always in German EA - Always in French UBI - Always in French Netflix - Getting better, but most of the older content only has German subs / localisation.

Geolocalisation needs to fuck off, just as these corporate tosspots need to.

It's not like you, the end user, know which language you prefer.

I can get behind them doing an estimated guess based on location, but I'd rather have it as a pop up when I enter the site.

" Hey, we see you're coming from Switzerland so we've set the language to German. Click continue to proceed in the German or click one or the other languages to switch!

Thanks for visiting".

I honestly don't understand why they make it so hard. And every time it looks like they fixed it. A few months after somebody decided it's working a little too well and reverts it back. Because screw the minorities ( multi lingual countries ) where it doesn't work.

Ironically I've heard that in Brussels they get everything in Flemish by default, and in flanders we get everything in French. It's like they're deliberately getting it wrong.

My uplay launcher closes when i tell it to and I don't remember changing that setting, which makes it close easier than common programs like steam, epic and discord. I remember gog also not truly closing but I may have done that intentionally.

The triple admin request on update is fucking stupid though, and idk how a company as big as ubisoft can have that be the experience.

Nah, the hotdogs work like that, but it's more about the experience

I mean, Costco will take your money and do all sorts of organizational psych to entice you to buy more, but they always had certain morals, as companies go. They always try to give you a lot for what you buy, and they had public good initiatives - like you can get great prices on prescription eyewear and pretty good vision appointments without a membership. It's not like they were losing out, but they're willing to miss out on some profits when it comes to health needs.

It's the way businesses used to be - not that long ago they'd give you all sorts of free stuff and even sell stuff at a loss to gain customer loyalty.

... Sorry I meant you could do that. They cut that program, and are cracking down on people sharing cards. The hotdogs getting jacked up in price might not be far behind

At this point, just getting what you're promised in reasonable quality is about the best it gets, and you really can't take that for granted anymore...

It did entice me to actually log into my Ubisoft account because I couldn't actually remember if I had any games from them or even why I had an account with them in the first place. I didn't purchase anything through their store front, so I don't particularly care. Unless they're wiping your Steam games, I don't really see the point, like who buys games off the Ubisoft storefront anyways? Hopefully they at least have some process for reinstating accounts if somebody still has an email receipt at least.

Huh. I've got some games on Ubisofts store.... Well, maybe not anymore.

You'll have to explain to me why I shouldn't just steal any future Ubisoft titles if they steal all mine first...

Yeah, was just thinking I should log in sometime. If it's gone, I got it free off epic anyway, so no big loss, but also a better reason to sail them digital season.

If you got it from Epic then you probably still have it with Epic. You'll just no longer have any achievements or playtime stats from Ubisoft.

At least, I hope.

As if I give a fuck about anything on Ubisoft’s platform. Honestly it’s an annoyance that makes me never want to pay for their games again. I bought Assassins Creed Origins on Steam and somehow I still have to fucking use Ubisoft’s launcher. Fuck them. Great game, but fuck them anyway.

Yeah that's how I felt about EA after buying Jedi Fallen Order on Steam. The bastards require not only the information from your PC at all times, but the information Steam has about you also.

Fair enough I suppose. It's been so long since I played whatever it is, I can't even remember what game it even is. All I know is the Ubisoft launcher is taking up space.

I will say, it could be someone hit a wrong button. My account isn't available because I've got 2fa apparently, but it's still there. I doubt even a big game company would be so stupid as to automatically delete a paying customer's account.

I'd you already paid for them, it's not stealing.

What happened to owning something you've paid for forever?

These companies need to realize if they keep fucking over their paying customer, it'll be more convenient for people to just pirate their product. At least FitGirl won't knock on my door and demand me to delete his repack off my hard disk just because I haven't visited his site in a while

Yar har fiddly dee. Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free.

As "wrong" as stealing is, I find it more wrong that companies can keep fucking us over like this without reprimand. Triple A games are becoming more and more difficult to justify the new $70 price tag.

I haven't bought a triple A game brand new since like 2014 or something. I wait until they have some sort of sale on them first. Literally didn't buy Cyberpunk 2077 until very recently when they finally knocked it down to $30 a few weeks ago. It actually shocked me to walk by the games isle recently and see that triple A titles including yearly sports games are like $80 now. Crazy IMO. I might go back to reading books.

80 dollars!? I thought it just went to 70!

Nope, some of the ones I have seen the "base" version is $70. But to get a good experience or have a better chance at beating it, for the in-game upgrades one has to go for the "deluxe" or higher which is usually $80+. When I bought Riders Republic the cadillac tier of that game was like $140 or something.

$30 is still too much. I have my alarm set to $10.

Btw, there are lots of free eBooks too. I'm currently in the Jenkinsverse.

Since I have a Kindle if I feel like reading anything paid, sometimes I'll subscribe for a month or two to Kindle Unlimited, read it, then unsubscribe.

FitGirl only demands you to prostrate before her and to be her sex slave.

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Guess I'm no longer buying games by Ubisoft. I spend hundreds in their store and they're going to delete my account if I'm inactive to long? You can't be making this shit up.

Not defending it but it has to be a pretty long period, i have played their game or used their launcher in a few years and have not gotten any email about my account getting deleted.

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And then they wonder why they can't compete with Steam and end up crawling back to Gabe for every game.

I've not been buying Ubisoft games since the sexual harassment scandal back in 2020, and this only reaffirms my choice not to buy anything from them. It's not just scummy, it's pointlessly scummy.

Admittedly, physical copies of games don't resolve this issue either: legally speaking when you own a physical disk, all you own is the disk itself- not the contents. The only way to actually fix this issue is better consumer protection laws.

Yep. We need a law that says "a person owns any item or service they buy for a one time fee. No 'licensing' them out of ownership" or legalese for the same thing. Only loophole should be if it's outright advertised as a subscription service.

Then another law that guarantees access to schematics and repair parts for reasonable fees. No loopholes. Schematics or die, that's how I roll.

Schematics or die

Surely if we get the schematics, we would need a die of some kind as well, right?

Jokes aside, what do you expect is the alternative to licenses? You don't "legally own it" because it's an endlessly duplicatable infinitely durable item. There's literally no way to enforce ownership the same way with actual physical objects outside of keeping track of who owns what (and unsurprisingly, that's what a license is).

You're attacking the wrong thing here, licenses aren't the problem. It's the revocation of them that is.

Those are my thoughts as well. Like it or not, licenses are the way software has been sold since the very beginning of the industry. The problem is that most licenses can be revoked at any time for any reason; and the solution for that is passing a law that prohibits that.

If firms want to be able to revoke a license, they should have to clearly and prominently outline the conditions for that to happen- preferably before you even press the "buy" button.

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I'm not completely against licensing, especially software. I'm against companies licensing buyers away from being able to use what they bought.

So if a license states "You own this as long as you don't make and distribute copies to other users. Also some lingo allowing for reasonable backup copies." 100% good in my opinion.

But a license that states "You paid for it but we can take it away for no good reason, such as a few months of inactivity." BS IMO.

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There's a solution: get the DRM free version/crack of the game you have buyed.

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One more company to add to my "Pirate Only" list

Don't even bother playing. Their games have been shit for years.

Anno 1800 is pretty great.

Had a blast with AC Valhalla too. Sure not really much of an AC game but it is fun to go raiding

Yeah people on the AC forums weren't feeling it which made me feel left out but I loved Valhalla! Put many, many hours into it and still haven't finished the story.

It's very deep and fleshed out but also intuitive and easy to pick up and play, loved it. If I hadn't lost my save I'd be right back playing bc I really want to finish the story but thinking of how many days I spent just to get as far as I did, and doing ALL of that over again is very overwhelming.

Wish I could find a saves for PC for every mission so I could just go back where I left off.

I just had a horrible experience with Assassins game purchased through Steam. I had bought the game few years back. Played some and stopped. And deleted my Ubisoft account. This week I downloaded the game again hoping to play it. I created a new Ubisoft account but the game wouldn’t launch.

Hours spent with the support got me nowhere. In summary, their response is that since the original Ubisoft account was linked to the purchase, they cannot now link the game to the new account.

I provided the Steam proof of purchase but that didn’t help.

Steam support didn’t help either.

I can’t play a game I purchased and own.

This should be illegal!

But that’s the neat part! You don’t actually own your games. You own the right to play a copy of the game, but if they don’t wanna provide a working copy, then you can’t play anymore. It’s all in the terms and agreements we click “I agree” on

Arr me matey, thar be many a way to acquire that treasure! Ignore the blockades - hoist the colors!

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Well guess I won't be "renting" any games from them then. If I buy something it means I own it, in perpetuity. In fact I'm fairly certain Europe has laws against this, though Ubisoft will probably just have to pay a "fine" that is more a gentle slap on the wrist. We need to stop fining these companies, it does not stop them from breaking the law repeatedly. Stop arresting pirates, start arresting CEO's.

If the EU slaps you with a fine, it's usually not a slap on the wrist but something that seriously stings.

Except for the big guys. Didn't Facebook have a portion on the side, for the expected fines? They still madr more money. If fines are just part of the business calculation, they don't sting enough.

€1.2B fine and the threat of 4% of their turnover as fine if they don't comply with the EU regulations. The EU does not fuck around and is not completely bought like the FTC.

Ha! I deleted my own account before they could, jokes on you Ubi!! Jokes aside, fuck ubisoft. I primarily buy games from GOG. Recommended everyone to do the same 🐖

I'm mostly asking out of curiosity, but also maybe for anyone here that'd like to know. But if you buy Ubisoft games from GOG, like Prince of Persia, they won't need the shitty Ubisoft launcher, right?

No sub-launchers on GOG. I think that would violate their no DRM stance.

Didn't know that, thanks. I don't think I've ever bought anything from there but I will if it means no sub-launchers.

The only thing thats stopping me from going fully to GOG is the fact that galaxy doesnt support linux right now.

I know GOG has a launcher, but I haven’t seen it in a long time. The links on my desktop just go straight to the game executables.

This is why Steam got the lion's share. Ubisoft is mad disrespectful.

I really can't imagine that this complies with EU law.

Which makes it even more strange considering Ubisoft is based in the EU.

Something like this might have to be done to comply to GDPR. I'm not sure about the details, but I do know a company cannot keep personal information for longer than they need. At some point, I guess that would probably translate to removing old and unused accounts.

Doubtful. There is no basis for Ubisoft to claim the account is no longer needed just because you haven't played a game in some arbitrary period of time. Especially if they allow explicit account deletion by the user.

Sure, but that isn't how it works under GDPR. You don't need to prove the information should be deleted, you need to prove the information must be kept. To give an example, the company I work for deals with long-lived contracts (often 20 years or more), and once they end we are legally allowed to keep the information for about 5 more years. After that we need to remove it.

Are you allowed to unilaterally stop providing the service you 've been paid too?

GDPR is not the only law In EU nor does it automatically supercede any and all other obligations.

I really don't see why you say this, sadly. Our laws do not protect us against account closures.

Imagine buying something from these people after this.

Yes, sometimes I don't play a game for 5 years, but I bought and own it, and I know it'll be there when I come back to it.

....unless it's Ubisoft, then purchases aren't really purchases, and you don't have any right to expect your property to be there when you get back 🤦‍♀️

You don't own it, though. The same can happen on Steam, though they're obviously not that shitty. The only store that lets you "own" games is GOG, that's why you won't find new games by shitty companies there.

They should email all the game keys when they shutdown the account, user OWN those, its their property.

I logged into steam after like 10 years no problem.

I trust Steam to maintain my library the same as any bank with my money. I don’t feel that way toward any other service.

@Boiglenoight @someguy3

Totally fair, too. I used to "own" Resident Evil 4 on Xbox 360, but it didn't count the same once the Xbox One released. Suddenly the license was revoked, and I was expected to repurchase the game.

Steam has, so far, kept its word for most of us.

Well that definitely won't get people to put on their pirate hats...

How long is "too long"? If I lose my Anno empires I will shit bricks

I've heard they are doing this to comply with things like GDPR. If that's the case, and they are deleting accounts to not be storing personal information longer than allowed, then before closing your account, they should email you an encrypted bundle of your data that you could later send back to them to restore your account. It wouldn't be against those laws if they send it to you to keep... and it would provide you with a path back to full restoration.

It's always ethical to pirate Ubisoft games

Why do so many people, usually children, think digital games are a good idea? Absolute scam, and it's only going to get worse. Next gen of consoles will probably be all digital. You will lose access to games for seemingly no reason, everything will be $70, no trading, no selling, and no one but the big guys making a dime from the sale.

Please shop at your local game stores, don't buy digital. You are not only ripping yourself off, but helping to enable a future where you don't even really own the games you buy. Look at ubisoft right now. You bought those games. You own them. They're literally stealing games just to try and force you to buy another copy.

Con artists.

What about pc gaming? As far as I'm aware physical pc games don't exist anymore.

Yeah when I hear about mUh pHySiCaL games I smell a console user. PC hasn't had physical in over a decade. Unless you like Hidden Object games.

No, our defense isn't physical it's just DRM free cracking or a GOG library.

I haven't even had a disc drive in the last 7 years, I'd need an external one because high end laptops tend to not have space for that shit when there's stuff that actually matters to consider, like performance and cooling.

I miss the days of CD keys and multiple disks, oh and owning a cd drive within the last decade. Oh wait, nah I like my expansive day 1 regged steam account with everything in it, ever and cheap keys.

Although I do miss manuals. A good manual in the pre-smartphone world was epic toilet reading. Or a good bradygames strat guide. The GTA:SA one was soooo good.

Because game store doesn't exist in my country and international shipping costs much as the game itself

That sounds like a great reason to pirate!

Well, single-player games anyway..

Are you like 12\s :D ?

The reason digital games took off is because it was a hundred times better in every possible way. In 2006 if you didn't live in a capital of a country in Europe. (Which is most people), buying games was a fucking pain in the ass.

First of all games had a short shelf life. Like insanely short. 3-6 months MAYBE. After that go fuck yourself. If it sold superb well maybe it got a platinum rerelease, but honestly most games that platinum-d, you probably had already, because they were the must have-s for the console, and those were basically the games you could buy in your tiny video game store / supermarket(s). (What I mean is they had a very narrow selection of the most popular games, and budget games). The idea that your budget games were older bigger titles didn't exist. You had awful budget games instead. Notice those are all but gone? Thank digital distribution. Makes no sense to stop selling a game. Also owning a more obscure console like the Saturn, was pretty much out of question, because there were even less stuff for it. Also in these stores no game, unless it was LITERALLY unplayable was marked down much. There was a very real cost associated with a physical game. It was perfectly possible to lose money on a real copy, unlike a digital one.

Also more experimental games were a huge risk for a publisher. Especially lower budget ones. Distribution and cartridge printing was awfully expensive. This did get better with CD based consoles a little.

Also the way games are distributed since the 90-s is optical media. Optical media is a huge PITA. The disks get damaged real easy, often without noticeable damage to the surface, they take up a lot a of space, and the optical drive is the single biggest point of failure on any period device. Laptops consoles, desktops. The first thing that always broke was the ODD. This resulted in a costly difficult and with more exotic devices impossible repair. I have a stack of like 20 PS2-s (I know I know), that I got for effectively free, because they were useless to their owners, because they don't read disks anymore.

So this is why digital distribution took off as hard as it did. Because people remember when games were an expensive pain in the ass, and dd made it incomparably cheaper, more convenient, and let's be real here, more long lasting.

Digital software delivery is perfectly fine.

DRM is intolerable.

If it was source code on a disk then I might agree, but as it is, your idea is juvenile and dead. Only rarely grabbing an old game release on physical media and just playing it is what you want or what you get. It may signify ownership, but so may a digital receipt.

Because everything is digital these days, most people are getting their music, films, TV, books, comics, etc digitally already. Why wouldn't they do the same with games. Especially if you're not the kind of person who cares about trading games back in or having them all up on a shelf.

People in discord tell me "it's convenient" and to "shut up, it's the way of the future" because they are children who grew up in a permissive environment that did not condition them to question that kind of rule. They question governments and lawmakers, but not game creation.

Maybe related to these changes, maybe due to something else, I don't know, but a Ubisoft game I have installed through Steam (Far Cry New Dawn) stopped launching for me. I tried verifying game files through Steam (more than once), but that by itself didn't help. What worked however was uninstalling Ubisoft Connect, then verifying game files again through Steam (which sadly installs Ubisoft Connect again), then launching the game (which initiated a Ubisoft Connect update for me). Hope that helps someone.

No such worries with a crack.

Maybe. I've been on both sides. I definitely think that at-launch prices for games like this are often outrageous, but usually some time after launch there are deals with very reasonable prices; lately I try to aim for the latter - both for the better price and for the better software quality (after all the patches and so on).

Yes, but then still crack. I have it in the version i want (mod compatibility) and it often runs better on wine.

This is kind of my biggest fear with all these digital games platforms. I have over 2100 games over most of the platforms, it just became so easy to finally be able to get all the games I grew up salivating over. What's to stop Valve or GOG suddenly "having" to make similar, or competely new changes of unbeknownst fuckery due to pressure from the spooky all-knowing investors?

They're all going to go away eventually. Put your favorite games on storage to keep. You don't have to install on your C drive.

Good luck dealing with DRM though. ~Strawberry

Goldberg Steam Emulator helps a bit (not sure if it's only for ARM Linux devices though). Hit replicates the functionality that scheme client provides, so even if steam itself should disappear you still have that. That doesn't really help with third-party DRM, but it's at least something that could help in such an event

Eh most games don't have it. And there's ways to get around just about everything that does.

Not surprised, coming from Ubisoft. Didn't they try taking down the DRM servers for some of their games, effectively making them impossible to use, until public outcry forced them to relent?

Might and Magic X I think which I bought real cheap but didn't get to it yet cuz.. it's on Uplay and I sometimes forget what's on it.

This is why I'm a big supporter of physical media if possible. Sure the actual game may not be on there or something because it's too big or whatnot, however with what the hell is going on with digital companies in the modern videogaming world, yeah no they simply just can not be trusted much with the amount of power they hold. This includes but not limited to: Ubisoft, Steam, EA, Epic Games, etc.

EDIT: Yeah GOG is fine apologies for that, however the well majority of games in the digital world are simply just licenses that these companies have control of.

What's wrong with gog? Just download the offline installer and do with it whatever you want.

That's plain wrong for GOG, you can download it and burn it to a CD if you wish.

Makes me wonder, how much data does it take to hold every users account info and library details? Not the games themselves, no profile pictures or anything, just the data that they must have in order too know who owns what. That has to be a huge consideration when you build an online store, right?

Did they run out of space? Are they deleting "old" accounts to free up servers for the absolute flood of new Ubisoft accounts that they're massively inundated with every day?

But seriously, what would an actual real world reason be for needing to delete accounts after X amount of time?

Totally negligible. All you need to keep is a line in a database with the person's email, hashed and salted password, and a unique identifier for each game they own - that's an amount of space that won't even register on any service nowadays. There might be other optional stuff that takes more space, like display pics, cloud saves etc but you can delete those without deleting the whole account.

Napkin maths to illustrate the point: Steam's game IDs are short numbers, typically close to 5 digits long. ASCII characters are one byte each, so let's assume 5 bytes plus one more for a separator character per game. If you wanted to store 8 billion accounts with 50 games each then the IDs would be about 2.4 TB, so a consumer hard drive worth ~$100 would do the job at least in the raw terms of data capacity

Your sums are right, but a 'hard disk somewhere' is not a robust, always on-line database. Running a 3TB Postgres instance on Amazon RDS will set you back something more like $1k/mo. Still absolute pocket change for Ubi, though.

https://calculator.aws/#/addService/RDSPostgreSQL

It certainly adds up, and it makes maintaining the databases more complex and costly as a whole.

Imo this is just lazy, they could at the very least "archive" old accounts and move the bare minimum data out of the main DB, as to make it possible to reactivate the account later on. Why can virtually every platform keep old account arround, but not Ubisoft?

Another reason to not buy digital games.

No, it is not. It's a reason to not buy Ubisoft games, physical or digital. Physical games usually still have a code that's linked to an account and you have to download the game from an server online. Physical games now are just as digital as digital games, but they come with added plastic waste.

The reason to buy physical is for the collection of physical games. Don't delude yourself into thinking it's actually on the disk though. That hasn't been the case for a while now.

For PC games, no, they're not actually on the disc. For console games, they generally are the full game, albeit sometimes buggy without the day-one patch.

Even console games are just shipping empty disks now. Call of Duty did that last year if I’m not mistaken.

This isn't the case. Many console discs download up to 60 gb worth of stuff

I said "generally." There are a few publishers that ship empty discs, and some games that are completely broken without a day-one patch, but most still have a playable game on the disc, at least on PlayStation. On Xbox, for games that have backwards compatibility with One, they often couldn't fit both game builds on one disc, so they made one version download-only instead of shipping two discs.

Not only that is not always the case, but with the locked down nature of consoles it would be way more difficult for a console owner to override any online DRM even if he had the whole software on disk.

Sony did this to me I'd bought quite a few vita games digitally. Left it alone a few months and then saw an email where they said to keep the account log in now. Tried to log in but they'd already wiped it.

Not falling for digital again.

It's probably different on consoles but on PC buying a "physical" copy these days is usually just a box with a code in it to download the game, no discs anymore.

Thanks. I’ve been considering buying more console games digitally. Going to hang onto physical as long as possible.

here I read they do not erase account like this. https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/account/article/closure-of-inactive-ubisoft-accounts/000079595 where is the truth?

We may also close long-term inactive accounts to maintain our database. You will be notified by email if we begin the process of closing your inactive account.
If your account was flagged as inactive and you would like to keep using it, you can cancel the closure of your Ubisoft account.

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That's expressed weaselly as fuck "We don't normally do it on Tuesdays, but if WE FEEL LIKE IT, we might do it to you, but we'll notify you first!"

Fuck you Ubisoft with a rusty rake dipped in radioactive acid. You remove my products, I'm requesting a chargeback via my credit card provider despite them being close to ten years old old. JUST FOR THE FUCK OF IT. Because you know what? If you're burning the bridge, I'm burning it extra hard. And yeah, if they get hit with enough of those chargebacks in a short amount of time, it's going to trip fraud activity with the CC providers and that .. oooh that's not going to be fun at all. Not even a little bit.

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EA's Origin closes your account after two years of inactivity since it exists, not sadly Ubisoft dose the same shit! :/

I boycott ubisoft and EA. They can both go suck a lemon.

Don't buy games you don't own

I think that ship has unfortunately sailed.

Even if I buy a game on Steam I don't technically own it. If the game was ever deleted from their servers and then I lost my local copy either because I uninstalled it or because I got a new computer, I would have no way to get my game back, and I doubt that Valve would refund me.

But some games literally don't have physical releases, even if I did have an optical drive. So what option do I have?

The only real solution to all of this is a changing copyright law that says that once a piece of software no longer becomes commercially available through legitimate means it becomes legal to pirate it. But that would require politicians around the world to a, understand computers and b, not being 900,000 years old.

GOG exists you know, they let you have a local copy with no DRM.

But I still need the website to actually download the game my point is if GOG went down I would be in exactly the same situationm I have no way to get another copy of the game.

So it isn't any more convenient to me than Steam

You can back-up purchased games in any storage device for yourself offline, so you don't need to download it again after purchasing it, you fully own it.

And you'd have to go to the physical store if you damaged or lost your original disk back in the day. Your argument is a little weird and unlikely. Also if you are backing up your content you never have to "go back" for anything.

Then don't buy games on any online platform. No more PC games.

GOG?

You still don't own your games. You lose access to their servers or you local collection and they are gone.

Which is the same as losing your CD collection. So you don't own CDs as well? Hell, you can burn all those GOG games on CDs/DVDs as well!

This proves why we need to regulate that digital or not, games we purchase are considered our property. Not at the mercy of deletion for zero reason. Otherwise, pirate away for all I care guys. If they treat us like this, fuck'em and their sales.

Does this apply to games purchased on steam as well? Bs

If a game you own on steam also requires you to sign into an Ubi account it might? Maybe you'd need to create a new Ubisoft account again? Idk im just guessing a possible answer to that. It's a good question.

Ubisoft might tell you that the game is already registered and won't let you register it again, even with a new Ubi account. I would assume the scenario where the customer gets screwed is the default.

Oh absolutely that would happen.
Let's throw in some surprise missing DLCs for good measure.

Thanks for the heads up, 10 year old account was almost gone, phew!

have some dlc there. had. no big deal, came with Assassin's Creed on PS3 I think. gave it to kids years ago. $20 maybe. got too old for games. can barely type

A part of me wants to start spreading a #PirateUbisoftGames hashtag.

...but another part of me doesn't want to bother because it's just Ubisoft games lol

They said if you receive an email, it's 30 days of no activity once you receive the email. Apparently it's being sent to people who have been inactive > 1 year.

Still bullshit, you could be in prison, in a coma, travelling the world or just not gaming for a while and want to come back to it. I know I can go months without playing games and then picking it up again.

Ubisoft is a C tier developer/publisher who generally doesn't get my dollars, although they have had some one-off hits in the last decade (Wildlands, Riders Republic, Anno games). I couldn't be bothered to shell out $80 for the latest AC or Farcry copy and paste slog. Seems their servers are getting full. Doesn't really inspire confidence in them as a service provider.

If they're deleting inactive accounts it's not because their servers are full, inactive accounts consume no resources!

I don't have any games in my uplay account.. but I think they're still on Steam, thankfully.

People keep buying digital rentals. Just pirate the living shit out of them. Had to bring my hat back out cause all of this BS.

There are two publishers who have not received a penny from my household since around 2013: EA and Ubisoft. Every time I see an article about these two being baddies it just reaffirms my conclusion from over a decade ago. Never buy from these two publishers and you will live a happier existence.

I've seen that it's only for accounts that are inactive and don't have any games. So it's a big nothing burger everyone ate.

This is misleading and ragebait. They only delete old-ass accounts without purchased games, and this is a compliance thing with European laws.

They showed in the tweet that they would deleted the account AND purchased games.

I read the Tweet, it does not "show" that the account had purchased games. This has been Ubisoft's policy for years and there is no record of deleted account, except for a random tweet.

Isn't this a Hanlon's razor issue? Probably someone working support being in charge of tweeting just didn't know what the actual policy was, or didn't understand it and just tweeted something without thinking of the repercusion?

And to clarify, I'm not defending Ubisoft. Despite being a big corp and big corps always act out of malice and greed, a corporation is not just one person

I'd say I'd get down voted but no longer on Reddit.

Yes the practice sucks and I hate corporations they all suck and are greedy.

However if I bought a device that requires any kind of digital signature then it's kinda sane deal. I'm not condoning the action but if that business went bust after 10 years there's a chance the product will likely fail after that point.

Yes old games can and are playable decades after they were released but those unfortunately aren't the games we have now. Anything digital can basically stop working without access to it's creator.

10 + years is a long time. Are you up in arms when your phone craps out after 2 years ? Your car stops after 20 ? Your house after 30+ years needs upgraded. New wiring new carpets new roof.

Things degrade. Unless we have open source and a way to keep refreshing the code after new systems come into play.

I disagree with Ubisoft practice but I also understand that after a certain period of time things will no longer work. They won't make money maintaining something so obviously they will void it

Nothing has a lifetime guarantee

...what does that have anything to do with closing accounts? Accounts do not degrade.

Ubisoft certainly is a dreadful company, and their actions further cement my concerns about the future of gaming as a whole. Here are a few reasons why:

  1. They constantly push microtransactions and loot boxes in their games, even on single-player titles like "The Division" and "For Honor". This practice has been shown to be highly predatory towards players who may not have the financial means to support such practices. It's disheartening that Ubisoft continues to profit off of people's addictions and lack of funds.

  2. Their customer service is notoriously terrible, with many users reporting wait times of hours or even days just to get a response to an issue. With how much money they make from their games, it's unacceptable that they don't have enough staff to handle customer queries in a timely manner.

  3. They regularly implement always-online DRM measures, which can cause problems for players who have issues connecting to the server or experiencing other technical issues. This makes it difficult for some players to enjoy the full experience of the game they paid for.

  4. They regularly delay or outright cancel planned expansions or DLC content, leaving fans high and dry without any resolution to the issues they were promised. This shows a blatant disregard for their customers and their investment in the game.

  5. They have been known to use legal threats to silence criticism from consumers who voice their dissatisfaction with certain aspects of their games or business practices. This kind of behavior is unbecoming of a company that claims to prioritize the player experience.

Overall, Ubisoft's actions show a complete lack of regard for their customers and a willingness to exploit them at every turn. If this trend continues, it could spell the end for the gaming industry as we know it today. I hope that more people become aware of these practices so that we can work towards holding companies like Ubisoft accountable for their actions. In conclusion, Ubisoft is a terrible company that does not deserve our support or money. We should all boycott them until they change their ways and start treating their customers with respect and dignity. Let's make a difference and stand up against these predatory practices! Thank you for bringing this issue to light.