Unless they also refund the price paid for the game, this is theft (or fraud), and should be punished as such.
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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The problem is that online storefronts all lease (edit: it's actually license) you the games you own until your account is terminated. I miss actually owning media.
The problem is that online storefronts all lease you the games
They license them. (A lease would normally have an expiration, and it would be clearly stated, which does not appear to be the case here.)
Accepting money and then refusing to honor the terms of exchange, whether it's an object or a license, is generally called fraud.
I miss actually owning media.
Yeah, I think most of us do.
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GOG comes close by allowing their users to get an installer if they want a back up.
Correct, GoG is completely DRM free and has the ability to download offline installer packages for all your games. There are even a few scripts out there to do it for you.
Some of Steam’s content does as well, but not all and it’s hard to tell.
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I agree, this is such a dangerously stupid move by Ubisoft.
I can only hope that this is just a mistake with an intern on their social account misinterpreting the ToS and that this isn't something Ubi plans to enforce. But damn, is it a bad look for them. Which is a shame, because they've been doing some decent work at improving their image as of late, too.
Seriously. For pirates once a game is cracked there is zero worries of what will happen to my copy? Somewhere they will be able to retrieve the game even if they don't bother backing it up.
But, paying customers opt not to do that to rely on official channels for downloads and installs. To punish them and reminding them how inferior their copy of the game is in the long term to the cracked copy is a bad move. It'll only take losing their game once to lose faith in the platform and not bother buying again.
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It's not. You don't own the game you lease it with the clause that the storefront can ban/delete/deactivate your account for any reason. This is true for Steam, GOG, Itch, Epic, EA, Microsoft, etc.
with the clause that the storefront can ban/delete/deactivate your account for any reason.
I think you're speculating in order to make excuses for a corporation. Show us the clause that applies in this case, and I will retract my statement.
Edit:
It's disappointing that several people replied to me with walls of text to lecture about things that were not disputed, and in some cases not even relevant. We know online game stores typically license them rather than selling them, folks, and Valve's license terms are not Ubisoft's terms. Kindly read before replying next time.
One person actually brought an Ubisoft inactivity clause to the table. (Thanks, @LittlePrimate@feddit.de) Interestingly, that clause seems to be present only in the terms of service for certain regions. A quick search doesn't find it in either the Canada or United States versions, for example. I wonder if that's due to better consumer protection laws in some jurisdictions than others.
So depending on which regional ToS the gamer(s) in question agreed to, Ubisoft accepting money and then revoking access might or might not have been fraudulent behavior.
More importantly, it's ethically wrong, and no amount of legal maneuvering will change that. Screw Ubisoft.
They indeed just "license" the games to us:
The Services and Content are licensed to you, not sold. This means we grant you a personal, limited, non-transferable and revocable right and license to use the Services and access the Content, for your entertainment, non-commercial use, subject to your compliance with these Terms.
For termination, it's not any reason but a lot of reasons, including the here discussed:
for any other reason in relation to your actions in or outside of the Services; upon notification, where your Account has been inactive for more than six months.
The first one opens a lot of options for them to find a reason. None of those would trigger any reimbursement, though.
Consequences of the Termination/Suspension of an Account.
You cannot use the Services and Content anymore.
In the event of termination of your Account or of Service(s) associated with your Account, no credit (such as for unused Services, unused subscription period, unused points or Ubisoft Virtual Currency) will be credited to you or converted into cash or any other form of reimbursement.
https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#10
Read 10.C. Valve can do it any time.
Most likely other storefronts have similar clauses
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The law is written by capitalists for capitalists and shouldn't he taken into consideration. EULAs are essentially privately-owned laws. It is theft, plain and simple.
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Oooh, I would really like to see that challanged in front of a German court after such a deletion happened. There are so many different legal facettes here.
- Is the deletion maybe necessary due to GDPR? (they have to keep the minimum amount of data)
- What's with the physical copies / codes that were bought. Should they automatically be freed up for re-use once the account that claimed them is deleted? (That would kinda make sense to me.)
- What about stricly digitally bought games?
- How far are their ToS valid in our jurisdiction?
Damn I really hope they do this to the wrong person and rub them the wrong way so they get dragged to court for this.
Data Protection shouldn't be a relevant issue - at least not in the sense that it forcss them to delete accounts. When you process data under the GDPR, you have to identify a lawful basis.
I assume that transactions through the eStore would be handled under the contract basis, with the hosting of the game in the library forming part of the contractual relationship. That would enable them to maintain an account for as long as the contractual relationship persisted.
That basically means GDPR doesn't force them to close an account, they close an account based on their policies because they choose to. That'll be based on their T&Cs, so things will fundamentally circle back to whether their T&Cs are legitimate and lawful.
It is possible that a data subject could potentially raise a claim for damages under the GDPR, on the grounds that the deletion of their account is a breach of contract that amounts to an availability data breach.
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I knew putting Ubisoft on the blacklist was a good idea a decade ago. Everyone should blacklist them as well, just let them die as a company.
@TheTrueLinuxDev They briefly gained my support with the community outreach they used to do with Rocksmith 2014...
Then they launched the shitty subscription service Rocksmith+ and fired most of their community team and I remembered that yeah this is still fucking Ubisoft I was dealing with
This is why I buy all my games on either GOG or Itch.
Yes, they definitely have their problems, but at least I can download an offline installer for pretty much any game I buy. Sure, GOG or Itch could still take them down in the future, but they can't take away the offline installers I have backed up on separate external HDDs.
I'm not as familiar with Itch but it works the same as GOG in that you can download the installer and keep it, no special activations or DRM required. Right? Because I definitely love that aspect of GOG. I just wish it had a larger library.
I just wish GOG would utilize Proton in a way to incorporate Linux support. It would be a slam dunk for them in terms of their userbase.
Bottles is pretty good. It's available on flathub.
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The thing is, just like software subscriptions, you aren't buying a piece of software, you're buying the right to use it. You can be pretty sure that they have legalese in the eula that says that your right to use the software expires with non-use. I wouldn't be surprised if they can even let it expire by simple deciding to no longer support it.
And what do you think will happen if their license servers ever go offline?
For the longest time I never bought anything digital, but I eventually caved to steam. I still blatantly refuse to join other digital platforms, except gog where I can download the software and it works without any remote server.
Same for music: I refuse to use Spotify. I buy from 7digital and the like, where I can download either mp3 or FLAC.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they can even let it expire by simple deciding to no longer support it.
That's one thing, and that's an acceptable risk everyone takes when buying from an online storefront, IMO. Eventually, they're going to stop supporting that, and we all kind of accept and agree to that. But this is them cutting off your access because you haven't played recently. They're not dropping support for the games in question, so this feels a bit unwarranted. What does it actually cost them to store your game license and save file? Is that cost really offset by the price of the games, themselves?
And what do you think will happen if their license servers ever go offline?
If Google Stadia is to be considered precedent, they refunded every purchased game and DLC when they shut down their service earlier this year. I should hope that a similar offering is made from other storefronts should they ever decide to cease operations.
Eventually, they're going to stop supporting that, and we all kind of accept and agree to that.
The hell we do. I've stopped buying games that disappear when some server somewhere goes offline.
You accept it by participating. You don't participate, therefore the comment wasn't referring to you.
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At least with Spotify, you don't specifically buy any songs.
GOG is the only good egg in your list. Shame their Linux support is awful...
I've like GOG since whether they disappear they provide installers for users, so it's the best of both worlds of easy launcher management and installer for those that want to archive and self host everything they buy.
Love that about GoG. It's been my preferred store for years.
If only they had a Linux version of Galaxy for cloud saves and auto updates, it would be my preferred store.
It's the only thing stopping me from using GOG more. I've fiddled with Lutris but it's still pretty finicky. Proton making things run out of the box most of the time make it very hard to switch off of Steam.
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People need to realize that you do not own the games that you buy from stores such as Ubisoft and Steam. You are renting these games at best. These companies can deny access to your games at any time they see fit. Whether it's deleting inactive accounts, a change of policy, business going bankrupt or any act of god.
This is why I only buy games from stores such as GOG or itch.io where I actually receive a DRM-free copy of the game. It's mine forever so long as I back it up; which is not hard to do since storage is so cheap nowadays.
So, if you want access to the games you paid for, you need to pirate them?
Yes that, or skip the paying part.
Definitely no reason to buy games if they can get away with pretending that you didn't.
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Yikes. Why... Going to have to hope EU saves people again from losing digital content they purchased due to inactivity. Or maybe it's a push towards piracy if honest paying customers get screwed like this.
It's crazy (sad) how much we are all starting to have to rely on the EU to save us from the BS.
If you are still buying Ubisoft games in 2023 you are part of the problem.
Why do people think they are "buying" something when in fact they are "renting". Everything that's not in your power is not in your posession, hence it's not something you have bought. This counts for ebooks with DRM as well as those online games. Amazon and other companies call it "buying" to make people believe it's equal to real books, games ect. in their posession, and people do believe it.
Ubisoft appears to have just raised the white flag to all of the seafarers. Yarrrr.
I wonder if this is an attempt at cutting down on bought or stolen accounts somehow. Buying or breaking into old accounts is a thing, so I wonder if this is their solution (a bad one I might add).
I think it's more of a "they have to host your shit somewhere" even if it's just cold storage think about having to task employees with backing up 7 year old drm onto cold storage. The man hours are better spent elsewhere. I don't love it, but I get it.
Hosting your shit costs them literal pennies at absolute most. "This user owns these games and keys" is bytes of data. If they have cloud saves it's slightly more, but about 100 orders of magnitude off of affecting their bottom line in any way. Old games they do or don't support have nothing to do with inactive accounts. Active accounts own them too.
There is zero financial rationale for this. It's not anything resembling a rounding error on the budget sheet. It's basically free.
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It's annoying enough that Netflix removes my account and watched history, after I go a few months without the service. But I still deal with it a couple times a year. This... this makes me just want to never touch anything Ubisoft ever again.
Honestly I think I just have black flag on my goobysoft account and I haven't plaid it for so long I don't care if I loose my account, but if I ever want to play that game again and it's gone, I will pirate the shit out of it
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Well. This certainly has me reconsidering buying any Ubisoft games. I get that we just license all our entertainment now when we purchase it legally, but most companies are smart enough to not remind you of that fact and how easily they could cut you off from everything you've bought.
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