Ubisoft Can Delete Inactive Accounts, Making Users Lose Access to Their Games
Ubisoft Can Delete Inactive Accounts, Making Users Lose Access to Their Games
In a move sure to draw ire from players, Ubisoft reveals that users who don’t sign into their Ubisoft account could lose access to their games.
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.
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Unless they also refund the price paid for the game, this is theft (or fraud), and should be punished as such.
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.
Thanks for the correction on lease vs license; I didn't really understand the difference.
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.
GoG is no longer completely DRM free, one example is the Hitman games that require online connection to play.
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.
I mean, let's not forget the whole sex predator thing. Their image is going to be faeces smeared on a bathroom wall until Guillemot goes.
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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.Permanently Deleted
https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#10
Read 10.C. Valve can do it any time.
Most likely other storefronts have similar clauses
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.
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.
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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.
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