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

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.

twitter.com/LegacyKillaHD/…/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

twitter.com/UbisoftSupport/…/1682046437834784768

Holymoly,

They’re making the case for pirating games even better.

What fucking morons

Underwear,

I saw a great quote,

“It’s not pirating if buying it isn’t owning it”.

gerbler,

It’s definitely still pirating. I think the quote uses the term “stealing”.

False, (edited )

Also you can steal services. For example imagine hacking the payment panel on an automated carwash so you don’t have to pay.

Platomus,

But this isn’t about services like Game Pass - these were bought games.

False,

It is service, which I agree is really shitty and shouldn’t be a thing. You’re buying access to a game, not a copy of the game.

kibiz0r,

Piracy can’t be stealing if paying for it isn’t owning.

gamer,

Piracy can’t be stealing when the supreme court of the united states says it isn’t stealing.

I like that quote a little better

MonkderZweite, (edited )

And neither is it piracy.

piracy: robbery or other violent actions outside of the jurisdiction of any state.

Luckily, it can be understood as rebels/feighters for freedom too.

dojan,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

Don’t feel bad about pirating AAA titles. See, the creatives and people that actually put work into the game have already been paid - usually at least. There are cases like Bethesda, who stole work from their composer - and so you’re not taking any profits from the people that matter.

Any money you’d pay to license a game would mostly just go to shareholders and greedy execs.

AustralianSimon,
@AustralianSimon@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah so their studio gets downsized, closed or merged. The big companies don’t care about the people. Tech lost 10k dev jobs last year, plenty of talent out there desperate.

dojan,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

And with the advent of AI tools and such much more work will be expected from fewer people. It’s a cutthroat industry that chews up passionate workers and spits them out when it’s done abusing them. The big companies definitely deserve to crash, and if a little bit of piracy can help induce that then I’m even more for it.

TheBat,
@TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

Yes but then again I’d be pirating Ubisoft games. Ain’t got time for that bloated crap.

ABCDE,

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

So why do this? Corporate greed.

Katana314,

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?

HiddenLayer5, (edited )
@HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

RisingSwell,

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.

fluckx,

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.

Spooner,

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.

fluckx,

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.

theneverfox,
@theneverfox@pawb.social avatar

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…

paddirn,

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.

SJ0,

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…

Sturgist,
@Sturgist@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

SJ0,

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.

TWeaK,

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.

model_tar_gz,

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.

TWeaK,

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.

Sturgist,
@Sturgist@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

saltesc,

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

gosling,
@gosling@lemmy.world avatar

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

BrudderAaron,
@BrudderAaron@lemmy.world avatar

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.

dgilluly,

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.

Jumper775,

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

dgilluly,

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.

MonkderZweite,

$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.

dgilluly,

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.

MonkderZweite,

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

kite,

It’s like they want people to pirate their games.

TheBat,
@TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

But I don’t want to pirate same old reskins of bloated games

kite,

Me neither, but a whole lot of other people do.

suckaduck,
@suckaduck@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Killer,

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.

InternetTubes,

I wonder if you contain any games validated through Steam that are Ubisoft, whether they are forced to keep the ones associated to that account active because Steam obviously isn’t going to break their own store because Ubisoft is screwing with their own.

Boinketh,

I fucking love that Valve is privately owned and hope it stays that way forever. It seems like they’re the only game store not subject to enshittification and I’m sure that not being a public company is a huge part of why. They’ve kept their amazing search feature all this time, just put out a significant UI update that helps UX a lot on high res monitors, and still let you play without updating if you go into offline mode (though it is a bit of a hassle).

CosmicCleric,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

Not defending it but it has to be a pretty long period

Fair enough, but why have any length of time at all? What purpose does it serve the prune old accounts?

Account information can’t be taking up that much space on a hard disk.

Killer,

I really can’t say.

Google is also deleting email accounts that have been inactive for too long as well.

RichardButt89,

Y’ARRR MATEYS!

0Xero0,
@0Xero0@lemmy.world avatar

One more company to add to my “Pirate Only” list

SaltyLemon,
@SaltyLemon@lemmy.world avatar

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

mackpack,

Anno 1800 is pretty great.

Draedron,

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

BallsInTheShredder,

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.

Vrijgezelopkamers,
@Vrijgezelopkamers@lemmy.world avatar

I’d even say Anno 1800 is easily one of my all-time favourite games. Ever.

yemmy,

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!

TulipanJones,

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

wanderingmagus,

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

Boinketh,

New law: every time they lock someone out of a game they paid for, either for lack of Internet or any other reason, they have to give a 1,000% refund and the contents of the CEO’s phone get uploaded to their store to be downloaded for free.

Lurker,

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.

Baconheatedradiator,

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

Hextic,

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.

RisingSwell,

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.

Sev,
@Sev@feddit.uk avatar

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.

Surreal,

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

GONADS125,

That sounds like a great reason to pirate!

HiddenLayer5,
@HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml avatar

Convenience.

ddkman,

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.

mindbleach,

Digital software delivery is perfectly fine.

DRM is intolerable.

Exusia,
@Exusia@lemmy.world avatar

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.

NuPNuA,

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.

cackaroo,

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.

Potfarmer,

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.

ButhJolokia,

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

MonkderZweite,

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.

ButhJolokia,

€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.

DrMango,

Fuck Ubisoft

LunchEnjoyer,
@LunchEnjoyer@lemmy.world avatar

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 🐖

soulifix,

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?

WarmSoda,

It depends on the game.

Hextic,

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

Boiglenoight,

That’s rad. 🤔

Transcendant,

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.

IMACRAB,
@IMACRAB@feddit.de avatar

That is correct!

Yendor,

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.

kapx132,
@kapx132@lemmy.world avatar

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

LunchEnjoyer,
@LunchEnjoyer@lemmy.world avatar

Heroic Launcher on Linux supports GOG, from what ive heard.

HowManyNimons,

What do you need Galaxy for?

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.one avatar

Another reason to not buy digital games.

Cethin,

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.

EveningNewbs,

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.

magic_lobster_party,

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

Karza,

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

EveningNewbs,

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.

azuth,

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.

HiddenLayer5,
@HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml avatar

Another reason to pirate games. They can ban your physical copy from running too.

Desistance,

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

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