It’s sick that people are threatening developers over a game. I’m glad they got the guy mentioned in this article, but for the devs who make the game and receive threats… I hope they get some justice.
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.
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.
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.
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) 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.
10 doesn’t have a c. 9 is about account termination and has a c but there’s no mention of account deletion due to inactivity. “[if] Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally” can be interpreted as encompassing subscribers that have been inactive, but it sounds more about when a game’s servers shut down or valve stops distributing it in a region and all players lose access.
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.
When you purchase on the Ubisoft Stores, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensed, non-commercial and personal license to use the Ubisoft Products.
Also note:
Ubisoft Products may also be purchased from third parties authorized by us to sell such Ubisoft Products. When you purchase Ubisoft Products from a third party, your purchase is with that third party and not Ubisoft.
So I’ll do this for ubisoft but last I checked it was in Steam, EA, Gog, and Epic’s. Itch is the only one I hold out hope to be better but this is pretty boiler plate stuff.
This license is just that, a license.
These Terms of Sale are incorporated by reference to the Terms of Use of Ubisoft available at legal.ubi.com/termsofuse (“Terms of Use”). All capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meaning given to them in the Terms of Use. Certain Ubisoft Products are subject to the acceptance of an End User License Agreement (“EULA”) and any other additional terms, which will be available to you before you can access, download, install or use such Ubisoft Product. UBISOFT’s Privacy Policy is an integral part of these Terms of Sale and can be found at legal.ubi.com/privacypolicy (“Privacy Policy”). Please read it carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.
So we now need to look at the EULA and Privacy Policy.
So the EULA of the store legal.ubi.com/eula/en-US Clause 1 backs of Clause 1 Scope of the Terms of Sale.
So Ubisoft reserves the right to terminate your account and thus the EULA agreement and thus your license.
For fun, lets do a bigger storefront because ubisoft is small.
Valve is smarter and calls this directly not a term of sale but a subscriber agreement. You are a subscriber to their service of steam and this is the agreement:
Steam and your Subscription(s) require the download and installation of Content and Services onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a non-exclusive license and right, to use the Content and Services for your personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms). This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license. The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet.
Establishes that these are licenses, not purchases and that you have to have a steam account and running the steam client.
Valve may restrict or cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time in the event that (a) Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally, or (b) you breach any terms of this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use). In the event that your Account or a particular Subscription is restricted or terminated or cancelled by Valve for a violation of this Agreement or improper or illegal activity, no refund, including of any Subscription fees or of any unused funds in your Steam Wallet, will be granted.
Valve reserves the right to cancel your subscription if they decide to cease providing such subscriptions to “similarly situated subscribers.” E.g. as long as they do it to everyone in your “situation” it’s legal. So Valve could very well delete inactive accounts legally without refunds. It’s in the EULA, you’ve agreed that as long as they do it without direct discrimination that it’s fine.
So again, you can go through every storefront and realize you have no ownership or right to a refund if they decide to shut down. Also don’t see this as “pro-corporation” I am not defending anyone here. I am pointing out that people have not understood the loss of ownership in the digital world we now live. I’ve been sitting here waiting for the day that people go “hey wait, they can just delete my account without anything I can do?”
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.
Now that I think about it, it might not even be consumer protection but instead a GDPR issue. I’m in Europe. Users becoming inactive can actually force companies to delete their data. Ubisoft might not have any other choice than to completely delete inactive users and of course they’ll do what is best for them, not for the inactive users.
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.
Sure, “laws are threats made by the dominant socioeconomic-ethnic group in a given nation. It’s just the promise of violence that’s enacted and the police are basically an occupying army.”
I was simply talking about the current legal definition. It’s hard to call it theft or fraud when the terms are made clear before the sale. An example of this to a lesser degree would be game studios making multiplayer games. Is it theft if a studio puts a game out on Steam with the clause “We can only support multiplayer for as long as our budget allows us.” and then goes under a few years later? A lot of these multiplayer services are things someone would have to pay for like Playfab or Gamelift. Not something easily open-sourceable. You could argue “Well don’t write your game like that” but then you are essentially killing the multiplayer game service industry without consideration of its existence or benefits.
That depends on the country you live in. In Australia for instance anything that looks like a “sale” must be an actual sale of a product and can’t be something else sneakily disguised as a sale. It’s illegal for services like Steam or app stores to deny you access to software you’ve bought on their platform in Australia.
That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before though.
Hmm yet steam has certainly banned lots of accounts, probably some of those owning games and are citizens of Australia. So clearly there is a clause around it.
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’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.
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.
That only kinda works. No multiplayer, no achievements, no cloud saves...
Some people will immediatly want to respond with "I don't want that anyway". Before doing so, please consider whether you're missing the point entirely.
I just use ownCloud for my own saves. I created a game saves file system to sync and some games that save out to different subdirectories, I just use symlinks
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. 😐🤷🏿♂️
The launcher is great for automated features that make our lives easier. But if the launcher is all we have and the installers are gone, the reason to use GOG at all over its competitors evaporates.
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.
The comment was referring to people who do participate though. If I make a comment about Australians Americans aren't supposed to comment their disagreement
That's retroactively deciding your audience. Once again, I'm highlighting that it's not our only option to endorse the practice, whereas the language of the comment I replied to implied that it is.
No, it's not. The original comment was specifically referring to it being a risk you accept when buying off steam etc. You accept that by participating. You can protest outside the system but your comment is entirely wrong.
Not all. Steam has DRM that developers don't have to use. Once the game is downloaded, it may not even check with Steam again to see if you own the game, even letting you launch the game when Steam is closed or uninstalled. It's not inherent to all Steam games.
Not all. Steam has DRM that developers don't have to use. Once the game is downloaded, it may not even check with Steam again to see if you own the game, even letting you launch the game when Steam is closed or uninstalled. It's not inherent to all Steam games.
Even places where you can download music aren’t safe anymore.
I bought an album back in September 2022 on iTunes and downloaded it. Apple Music synced some of my music and fucked up my library, causing me to have to go to a backup from August 2019. I thought, “no problem, I’ll just go download that album from iTunes again.”
Album is no longer available for download. I have a receipt showing I legitimately paid for it.
I’ve found others online saying the same. One person even defending this behavior “well it’s not Apple’s fault the music isn’t on the store anymore”. Maybe not, but I’m going to need a refund from them if that’s the case. We shouldn’t be tolerating this BS.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
It’s a little tidbit that was taken out of context by easily led morons who believe that there is some grandiose world scheme being perpetrated to ensure that us plebs never get to own anything.
The same morons will tell you that the people in charge of these grandiose schemes are also too stupid to ever get anything done.
Oh jfc. Yeah, I know what you’re talking about now. I will say that recently I’m not too happy with the amount of things being sold as a service instead of sold outright. But I’m not going any further than that.
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 believe it does. I don’t really buy many games on Itch to be honest but from what I understand and from the handful of games I have obtained from there (mostly just free games), that is indeed how it works.
And agreed. Definitely wish GOG had a larger library.
@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
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.
GDPR clearly says, if there is a valid reason for storing your data, they can store it (no timelimit). Like you can store data for invoices etc for 10 years too even when you ask them for deleting your data.
Iguesseverybody also agreed to it when you registered.
I do not see any valid reason why they would delete acvounts, like saving 1 line in a database?
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