In a response to a post from the AntiDRM Twitter account, Ubisoft Support has clarified that users who don’t sign in to their account can potentially lose access to Ubisoft games they’ve purchased. The initial post from AntiDRM featured a snippet of an e-mail sent to a user from Ubisoft notifying them that their account had been temporarily suspended due to inactivity and warning that it would be closed permanently in 30 days. Responding to the ominous e-mail, the Ubisoft Support Twitter account stated “We certainly do not want you to lose access to your games or account” and noted that account closure could be avoided by signing in to the account again.
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.
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.
It’s not even in legalese. I’m on my phone right now and thus have no motivation to look through a couple EULAs but I did read the interesting parts of a handful of software EULAs. A couple straight up state that they can revoke your access for any reason (usually followed by “including x, y, z”). And especially for multiplayer games, I understand why you would prefer your wording as such instead of having to list and define every “bad behaviour” like cheating, cracking the game, being an asshole to the community (including the moderators), etc.
The decision makers at Ubisoft, I imagine, just went ahead and said “How about we take this ‘for any reason’ to the absurd? If just 1% of the deleted accounts is remade and buys their games again, we make a lot of free money.”
Unfortunately, “not tolerating this BS” just means “Not buying from them”, and by the time you see that it’s a problem, it’s too late for that. Even if this was a clear-cut case of them breaking some law, which it isn’t, it’s Apple; they have more money than God, and you’d never successfully sue them before they bankrupted you.
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.
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.
Just reminded me of the concern people brought up when GOG Galaxy was starting out: Once most people are using the launcher, we’re a few steps away from losing the installers. 😐🤷🏿♂️
If only they had a Linux version of Galaxy for cloud saves and auto updates, it would be my preferred store.
