I feel a bit disappointed by the number of people suggesting that an NFT would somehow help here.
An NFT is just a fancy signed receipt. I can mint an NFT saying the OP owns a bunch of Ubisoft games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed. Ubisoft could mint an NFT saying he owns a bunch of games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed. (He probably still has the receipts from when he bought the games in his inbox somewhere, but of course, his account is still closed.)
We can store whatever records we like in a fancy distributed database, but his account will still be closed. The only fix here is Ubisoft needs to not close peoples accounts.
Somewhat amusingly Ubisoft is in the process of launching an NFT system (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/12/ubisofts-first-nft-pl...) and as anyone paying attention would no doubt expect, it doesn't solve anything related to this; up to an including the fact that if you get banned you...lose your NFTs.
NFT's are stupid. It's just the NFT idiots trying to find an actual legitimate reason for them to exist by saying it solves every problem, which it doesn't.
Exactly. The idea that NFTs somehow help in these kind of situations is utter nonsense. Sure, if Ubisoft minted an NFT and give it to you, they couldn't delete the NFT itself. However, it is always up to Ubisoft or whoever else is using NFTs whether they want to honour that NFT or not. You can present them with the NFT, and they can say "Hmmm... no."
An NFT is like a key to a house. You can use it to open the door until the owner of the house decides to change the locks. You still own the key, but that impresses nobody.
"...up to an including the fact that if you get banned you...lose your NFTs."
That cant be right, well Ubisoft could still fuck this up. I can sell my NFTs on marketplaces completely independent of ubisoft. Sure they could invalidate, not honor the NFTs, but i wouldnt expect them to do so unless criminal activity like money laundering is involved.
What if it was all on chain? See https://ultra.io (a Steam competitor) for an example of this:
"All the content you buy from Ultra, such as games, DLCs, and virtual items, are on-chain digital goods you truly own. On Ultra you’re in control of your assets as though they were physical items. These assets can be sold, traded and given away to your friends within Ultra, or outside of Ultra, through 3rd party marketplaces and mobile apps."
What about proving ownership, on the balance of probabilities, to show tortuous damages in a court? Seems like a list of receipts that's somehow certified would be beneficial to that end?
Probably first we need legislation to make digital purchases resalable, and to require DRM free versions to be made available if a product is EOL-ed.
Companies world copyright against the populous who are [in a functioning democracy] the ones who give them the copyright in the first place.
I dunno - when MP3s became thing, in my country you were allowed to convert your CD to MP3. But you need the CD to prove your ownership (technically - I don't know if there ever was a court case where somebody produced the CDs).
It seems to me in that sense a NFT could help - you can get the MP3s anywhere, but the NFT proves you actually paid for it.
Of course there would have to be a way to get the Ubisoft games, or they would have to play along.
A correctly implemented NFT would mean that he could still sell the game to someone else, he should still be able to take the NFT of his games with him and make a new account theoretically. If they provide no way for him to auto export his NFTs then nobody should bother buying NFTs of games since as you're suggesting, it's pointless.
But if he creates a new account and transfers the NFTs (that function as your proof of ownership of a game in this case), then you're good to go again. Since they can't be deleted. It's a different story if your NFTs are banned of course, then it wouldn't matter if you transfer them to a new account.
That may be how some NFTs are utilized. But it’s probably better to think of an ERC20 (tokens) and ERC721 (NFTs) as self executing code on the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The difference between the two is that ERC20 standard is self-similar and the ERC721 standard is uniquely identifiable.
Sure you can mint an NFT with “whatever record” you want in theory, if the NFT isn’t minted within a given self-executing smart contract, then your NFT is immediately recognizable as bullshit.
You are simultaneously suggesting there is no need for a technological solution, the answer if forcing Ubisoft to act a certain way, whereas the technological solution removes the need to trust Ubisoft to act a certain way or force them to when they don’t.
That wouldn't be a problem with NFTs as they could just go to another game provider, show their proof-of-ownership and download their games from there. Such import functionality already exist to some limited degree right now with GoG, Steam and Co., but all of them require that your account with Ubisoft is still working. NFTs would work even if Ubisoft disappeared completely.
Furthermore NFTs would allow used game sales, something we have lost with the switch from physical to digital, despite it being required by law in many countries. A signed recipe is nowhere good enough, as that still depends on your account at Ubisoft, e.g. to keep track of if you refunded the game or not.
Now getting the game industry to actually implement and use an NFT based game-ownership system, that's the tricky part. But claiming there is no technological problem that needs solving is ignoring all the freedoms we lost by going digital with our purchases and that could be regained with NFTs.
This article is a great example of why we need legislation around ownership of digital items. I generally hate getting the government involved in things, but if you're paying money for goods, there needs to be a way to be credited or receive your digital goods in a way that still works without your "account".
Personally I always get kind of nervous around buying things on PSN, Xbox, Stadia, Steam, Oculus, etc. If they ban me, do I lose my thousands of dollars of games? That doesn't seem right (and no, I don't really care too much about what the Terms and Services say).
I think one simple legislation could help a lot: forbid to use the word 'buy' in this context. Instead it should be 'hire' or 'lease' or something.
Once I 'bought' an e-book that was copy protected by Adobe (my fault I didn't read the specs before buying). But because you can only read it when Adobe's servers are online no ownership is transferred to you as buyer. You buy rights to read the book on their terms.
'Hire this book' would be fair to use in this context.
(Afterwards I successfully converted to book to an e-book format that I owned with some Calibre plugins).
>Personally I always get kind of nervous around buying things on PSN
My PlayStation account was blocked for online games/chat for 2 months with no clear reason, this also wasted 2 months of PS Plus subscription sice I could not really benefit from it. They did not offer any way to dispute this or clarify what exactly was wrong to avoid it.
My son was using the console to play Fortnite, he told me that some guy blackmailed him to give him gifts or he will submit fake reports, I have no idea who checks this reports and if they have competent people that understand our native language or is all just some shit AI and some dude somewhere just confirming that the AI was wight.
This incident completely changed my sentiments on Sony consoles and on top their greedy pricing and for sure I will avoid them in future.
> I don't really care too much about what the Terms and Services say
It does not matter even if you care. You do not have negotiating power to change them. It is a 'my way or highway' situation.
And the government should be involved, you alone cannot change the Terms of Service, but your country can create laws to protect you from thieves, whenever they steal physical or digital goods. If you don't like your government fight to improve it but do not renounce to the power that it gives you as a citizen.
I wouldn’t feel any guilt about pirating the content I bought on any of those services if my account was taken from me for inactivity. I’d be interested to hear the argument about why that would be wrong though.
Everybody I've talks to jumps on the victim blaming high horse every time this comes up. "Well just don't get banned. What did you get banned for? What were you wearing when you got banned?"
I have friends that got banned because somebody hacked into their account and fraudulently bought things. This is apparently account sharing, ban. Or filing a dispute about the charges = ban. Mass report by trolls = ban. There's a bunch of technical reasons outside your control where your account can be banned.
Most of the legal protections you otherwise would have apparently do essentially nothing when you're banned from the service / platform you are required to use instead of just the thing you bought.
This is annoying when your Steam account is hacked. This is a life altering problem when your YouTube comment gets flagged for a combined technicality of a combo-rule like "hate speech or terrorism" by calling somebody a "dummy," causing your YouTube account and all videos to be shut down, gmail account and all archived email deleted, all google docs deleted, all linked google cloud services to be suspended, and all 3rd party login oauths to be revoked. You won't be able to log into even non-google things, and further can't reset your password / login credentials or prove who you are because your email was deleted.
This entire nightmare can happen to anybody at any time for any reason. Even further, because YouTube in particular is fully automated customer support, your rebuttable is likely to be automatically denied and flagged for trolling putting you in an even worse state. The only chance you have is if you happen to personally know a higher-up human before hand that you're able to talk to.
> If they ban me, do I lose my thousands of dollars of games?
You absolutely do.
Anyway, I agree with you. Digital marketplaces are becoming more and more important and certainly I'm sure I have a lot of money in Steam, Kindle, and various other services. It'd be nice to move away from the Wild West phase given how much money's sloshing around at this point.
That's exactly why it's safer to buy DRM-free from GOG because you can keep a backup of your purchases without having to worry the service might lock you out or remove a product.
https://gog.com has (nearly?) all games DRM-free, so you can backup (and also actually torrent I believe) any of the games, that's why I choose to buy from them.
If you try to take this to court, you will typically be offered a "goodwill payment" of a complete refund of all your games.
That's because, even though the TOS is quite clear that you can lose all your stuff due to inactivity, Ubisoft doesn't want the risk of the court deciding the TOS is unfair and striking out those clauses.
We should go in the complete opposite direction and abolish data ownership straight up. Copyright needs to end. The second it's gone it will no longer be a crime to copy and these problems will no longer exist.
> Personally I always get kind of nervous around buying things on PSN, Xbox, Stadia, Steam, Oculus, etc. If they ban me, do I lose my thousands of dollars of games?
You didn’t buy any games. You paid for access, but as you note you don’t actually own any of these games. Please stop giving in to the doublespeak BS of these companies.
Other than the false marketing (using words like “buy”) and that DRM is toxic, I don’t see what’s really not right - it’s a terrible deal but you’re free to not partake. As long as people keep giving companies money for this kind of thing it will continue.
It’s not like being able to play the very latest AAA game is something that is hard to give up, unlike a lot of other essential software. Just say no.
(BTW, is this really the case with Steam? Last time I checked you could always make a local offline backup of a downloaded game and bring it with you; any connectivity/license check would have to be made in the game itself)
> If they ban me, do I lose my thousands of dollars of games?
I can kind of understand if you were legitimately in the wrong (e.g. sending death threats to other users, getting a warning, and then doing it again), but in the situation where you are simply inactive for some period of time I think it’s unreasonable.
Unfortunately, there's a pretty straightforward way around legislation that requires that people have access to games they've bought, and companies are already moving in that direction: Just make every game have an online component, and make it not run if it can't properly authenticate with the server.
Banning this type of practice gets into much thornier ground, because plenty of games legitimately do run only online (MMOs of all types, for instance), and for plenty of others, there's a legitimate reason for them to at least have an online component...and just how deeply embedded in the game that online component has to be is rarely going to be a simple matter to determine.
I don't really see a good solution to this at the moment, sadly.
> We may also close long-term inactive accounts to maintain our database.
How many kilobytes takes too store ownership data? I can just imagine that tracking data is thousands of times bigger.
> The crazy thing about this is that it’s perfectly legal for video game companies to delete your account regardless of whether you’ve spend zero or a thousand dollars on their games
It's a shame that we are going to fight for our digital rights because currently we have almost none because justice does not understand technology.
When possible, try to prefer DRM-free versions of games. If there's DRM, then one doesn't really own it. PCGamingWiki [1] is a great resource that will list the DRM status of a given game for different distributors (yes, some stores may have DRM while others do not). In general, GOG [2] is all DRM-free games.
There's a lot of heritage in archived and emulated computer games from 80's and 90's. Further, I still have some games in their original boxes somewhere and being nostalgic enough to not have thrown them away I own my copies of those games in the true sense of the word. Same for music on compact discs. I have ripped most of them for myself but I still own the original copies in a closet.
Now, 30 years from now or roughly 2050, there will be a cultural and historical blackout because anything people are "buying" now are basically revokable privileges to temporarily hire games, music, and movies. There will be no single server up and running to provide today's games for people who are today young but will be middle-aged few decades from now. And, even before that, judging based on Ubisoft it looks like the "purchases" will be long gone before the service itself.
>“Please be reassured that Ubisoft does not automatically close inactive accounts,”
but
>inactivity warning from Ubisoft in his spam folder dated January 20th. The email stated that his account had been temporarily shut down and will be permanently closed if he didn’t click the provided link within 30 days.
So not automatic closures...but there is a live system to automate it?
Unsurprising. I have found Ubisoft customer support pretty abysmal.
I pre-ordered the latest Assassin’s Creed directly from Ubisoft thinking it was better than buying it from Amazon. It got delivered to the wrong address, so I opened a ticket. They ignored the ticket for weeks despite me sending follow ups every few days, so I eventually raised a dispute with PayPal to get a refund, which I received.
Ubisoft finally responded to the ticket at that point, saying that I “may have issues making purchases from the store in the future” due to the reversed payment. So basically, they no longer want me as a customer because I tried to get a refund for a game they failed to deliver.
I paid extra for a disc version of the PS5 for exactly this reason. If I buy a game today I want to be able to play it 20 years from now. I can bet money that none of the mainstream digital stores of today will be operational by then.
Ubisoft claims accounts with games on it will never be up for deletion. I could see this being a bug, but could also just simply be that... the person is confused and that specific account didn't actually have a game on it? Could it be a different account maybe? That seems a more likely and simple explanation to me, and this right now just comes down to a he said / she said.
Obviously it's not great that the ToS has wording protecting Ubisoft's ass against such mistake, but again, everyone here is just taking the word of this one person as gospel, but I don't really see any solid evidence provided.
> The company’s support page also cites the General Data Protection Regulation compliance and freeing database space as the main reason why they delete unused accounts.
Oh wow. That 1k of database data must really be dragging down their system.
/s
Seriously, what kind of child's-first-attempt-to-use-a-database system are they using where this is even a consideration? :(
It could have been 1 kilobyte, but after numerous decisions to track everything to the Nth degree, the account was closer to 400 petabytes.
</sarcasm>
When I contracting at a large tech company, so had to implement a service that would delete any personally identifying information from the database for users that had been inactive for more than 18 months. Essentially this meant dynamically scanning the entire database schema for any columns that had a user ID and deleting any matching records. It was kind of a fun project.
Wow, glad I saw this - it explains a lot. Went to go and try to play an AC game again after giving up a year or two ago and couldn't figure out my login details. Guess this is (maybe?) why. Can't find a deletion email though, so it seems impossible to know for sure.
“Ownership” is implied when you “purchase” something. If I own it, I should have certain basic rights like the right to keep enjoying it if the publisher goes out of business. To that end, I strongly oppose DRM or at least would favor laws that let me transfer my DRM’d content to another provider (or even require me to, if a provider “cancels” me or goes out of business).
It’s not so clear when the digital work requires ongoing effort from the provider, as in an online game that requires the provider to operate servers. In that case I think that providers should either be forced to provide the service as a rental instead of a “purchase”, or the provider should be forced to provide all information and code necessary for third parties to operate compatible servers.
People get arrested and put in jail because car rental company "mistakenly" declared them as thieves on a basis of their fucked up accounting.
I have a proposal. Let's extend the same courtesy the other way around. If I feel that company had stolen / interfered with enjoyment of my right to do certain things (which they in effect did) why don't police upon my complaint go and stick their CEO/Owner to jail with no bail and let them wait till the dust settles.
You know how the sale of M&M X Legacy was for some period of time disabled, because DRM was broken thus the game was unplayable? I'd seen a news that it got restored, so I login to Uplay (or Ubisoft Connect as they call it nowadays) and see... that my game is missing.
Intellectual property does not make sense on theory or in real life.
When you "buy" a game you are paying for convenience, for server access, for updates & support, and for other platform services like storing saves at cloud. You don't own a thing and pirating a game while illegal is trivial.
The issue here was putting money on a shitty service that does not care about it's customers experience. I have spent thousands of dollars on Steam. I don't expect my account to be terminated after 1 year of activity but I also don't expect it to last forever and to be able to pass it to descendants.
For auditing purposes these companies have to keep records of transactions. So I don’t understand the need to delete accounts and digital items. Sure they could delete non essential data like activity, game saves, screenshots etc. but how difficult is it to keep a login and list of owned games. It’s prob a few kb of data…
[+] [-] Lazare|4 years ago|reply
An NFT is just a fancy signed receipt. I can mint an NFT saying the OP owns a bunch of Ubisoft games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed. Ubisoft could mint an NFT saying he owns a bunch of games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed. (He probably still has the receipts from when he bought the games in his inbox somewhere, but of course, his account is still closed.)
We can store whatever records we like in a fancy distributed database, but his account will still be closed. The only fix here is Ubisoft needs to not close peoples accounts.
Somewhat amusingly Ubisoft is in the process of launching an NFT system (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/12/ubisofts-first-nft-pl...) and as anyone paying attention would no doubt expect, it doesn't solve anything related to this; up to an including the fact that if you get banned you...lose your NFTs.
There is no technological problem to solve here.
[+] [-] ChildOfChaos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] user-the-name|4 years ago|reply
An NFT is like a key to a house. You can use it to open the door until the owner of the house decides to change the locks. You still own the key, but that impresses nobody.
[+] [-] Paradigma11|4 years ago|reply
That cant be right, well Ubisoft could still fuck this up. I can sell my NFTs on marketplaces completely independent of ubisoft. Sure they could invalidate, not honor the NFTs, but i wouldnt expect them to do so unless criminal activity like money laundering is involved.
[+] [-] steelstraw|4 years ago|reply
"All the content you buy from Ultra, such as games, DLCs, and virtual items, are on-chain digital goods you truly own. On Ultra you’re in control of your assets as though they were physical items. These assets can be sold, traded and given away to your friends within Ultra, or outside of Ultra, through 3rd party marketplaces and mobile apps."
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|4 years ago|reply
What about proving ownership, on the balance of probabilities, to show tortuous damages in a court? Seems like a list of receipts that's somehow certified would be beneficial to that end?
Probably first we need legislation to make digital purchases resalable, and to require DRM free versions to be made available if a product is EOL-ed.
Companies world copyright against the populous who are [in a functioning democracy] the ones who give them the copyright in the first place.
[+] [-] kkjjkgjjgg|4 years ago|reply
It seems to me in that sense a NFT could help - you can get the MP3s anywhere, but the NFT proves you actually paid for it.
Of course there would have to be a way to get the Ubisoft games, or they would have to play along.
[+] [-] giancarlostoro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cinntaile|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaycities|4 years ago|reply
That may be how some NFTs are utilized. But it’s probably better to think of an ERC20 (tokens) and ERC721 (NFTs) as self executing code on the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The difference between the two is that ERC20 standard is self-similar and the ERC721 standard is uniquely identifiable.
Sure you can mint an NFT with “whatever record” you want in theory, if the NFT isn’t minted within a given self-executing smart contract, then your NFT is immediately recognizable as bullshit.
You are simultaneously suggesting there is no need for a technological solution, the answer if forcing Ubisoft to act a certain way, whereas the technological solution removes the need to trust Ubisoft to act a certain way or force them to when they don’t.
[+] [-] grumbel|4 years ago|reply
That wouldn't be a problem with NFTs as they could just go to another game provider, show their proof-of-ownership and download their games from there. Such import functionality already exist to some limited degree right now with GoG, Steam and Co., but all of them require that your account with Ubisoft is still working. NFTs would work even if Ubisoft disappeared completely.
Furthermore NFTs would allow used game sales, something we have lost with the switch from physical to digital, despite it being required by law in many countries. A signed recipe is nowhere good enough, as that still depends on your account at Ubisoft, e.g. to keep track of if you refunded the game or not.
Now getting the game industry to actually implement and use an NFT based game-ownership system, that's the tricky part. But claiming there is no technological problem that needs solving is ignoring all the freedoms we lost by going digital with our purchases and that could be regained with NFTs.
[+] [-] endisneigh|4 years ago|reply
Personally I always get kind of nervous around buying things on PSN, Xbox, Stadia, Steam, Oculus, etc. If they ban me, do I lose my thousands of dollars of games? That doesn't seem right (and no, I don't really care too much about what the Terms and Services say).
[+] [-] tdrdt|4 years ago|reply
Once I 'bought' an e-book that was copy protected by Adobe (my fault I didn't read the specs before buying). But because you can only read it when Adobe's servers are online no ownership is transferred to you as buyer. You buy rights to read the book on their terms.
'Hire this book' would be fair to use in this context.
(Afterwards I successfully converted to book to an e-book format that I owned with some Calibre plugins).
[+] [-] simion314|4 years ago|reply
My PlayStation account was blocked for online games/chat for 2 months with no clear reason, this also wasted 2 months of PS Plus subscription sice I could not really benefit from it. They did not offer any way to dispute this or clarify what exactly was wrong to avoid it.
My son was using the console to play Fortnite, he told me that some guy blackmailed him to give him gifts or he will submit fake reports, I have no idea who checks this reports and if they have competent people that understand our native language or is all just some shit AI and some dude somewhere just confirming that the AI was wight.
This incident completely changed my sentiments on Sony consoles and on top their greedy pricing and for sure I will avoid them in future.
[+] [-] Hokusai|4 years ago|reply
It does not matter even if you care. You do not have negotiating power to change them. It is a 'my way or highway' situation.
And the government should be involved, you alone cannot change the Terms of Service, but your country can create laws to protect you from thieves, whenever they steal physical or digital goods. If you don't like your government fight to improve it but do not renounce to the power that it gives you as a citizen.
[+] [-] sefrost|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bgro|4 years ago|reply
I have friends that got banned because somebody hacked into their account and fraudulently bought things. This is apparently account sharing, ban. Or filing a dispute about the charges = ban. Mass report by trolls = ban. There's a bunch of technical reasons outside your control where your account can be banned.
Most of the legal protections you otherwise would have apparently do essentially nothing when you're banned from the service / platform you are required to use instead of just the thing you bought.
This is annoying when your Steam account is hacked. This is a life altering problem when your YouTube comment gets flagged for a combined technicality of a combo-rule like "hate speech or terrorism" by calling somebody a "dummy," causing your YouTube account and all videos to be shut down, gmail account and all archived email deleted, all google docs deleted, all linked google cloud services to be suspended, and all 3rd party login oauths to be revoked. You won't be able to log into even non-google things, and further can't reset your password / login credentials or prove who you are because your email was deleted.
This entire nightmare can happen to anybody at any time for any reason. Even further, because YouTube in particular is fully automated customer support, your rebuttable is likely to be automatically denied and flagged for trolling putting you in an even worse state. The only chance you have is if you happen to personally know a higher-up human before hand that you're able to talk to.
[+] [-] emodendroket|4 years ago|reply
You absolutely do.
Anyway, I agree with you. Digital marketplaces are becoming more and more important and certainly I'm sure I have a lot of money in Steam, Kindle, and various other services. It'd be nice to move away from the Wild West phase given how much money's sloshing around at this point.
[+] [-] wildpeaks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vital_beach|4 years ago|reply
This type of anticonsumerism would get so much attention if it were in another field. I can only hope it happens here.
[+] [-] alasdair_|4 years ago|reply
Generally yes, and this is obviously bullshit.
[+] [-] akavel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] londons_explore|4 years ago|reply
That's because, even though the TOS is quite clear that you can lose all your stuff due to inactivity, Ubisoft doesn't want the risk of the court deciding the TOS is unfair and striking out those clauses.
[+] [-] malka|4 years ago|reply
And people want you to believe that "it is not ethical".
[+] [-] dend|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdonis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3np|4 years ago|reply
You didn’t buy any games. You paid for access, but as you note you don’t actually own any of these games. Please stop giving in to the doublespeak BS of these companies.
Other than the false marketing (using words like “buy”) and that DRM is toxic, I don’t see what’s really not right - it’s a terrible deal but you’re free to not partake. As long as people keep giving companies money for this kind of thing it will continue.
It’s not like being able to play the very latest AAA game is something that is hard to give up, unlike a lot of other essential software. Just say no.
(BTW, is this really the case with Steam? Last time I checked you could always make a local offline backup of a downloaded game and bring it with you; any connectivity/license check would have to be made in the game itself)
[+] [-] Aeolun|4 years ago|reply
I can kind of understand if you were legitimately in the wrong (e.g. sending death threats to other users, getting a warning, and then doing it again), but in the situation where you are simply inactive for some period of time I think it’s unreasonable.
[+] [-] danaris|4 years ago|reply
Banning this type of practice gets into much thornier ground, because plenty of games legitimately do run only online (MMOs of all types, for instance), and for plenty of others, there's a legitimate reason for them to at least have an online component...and just how deeply embedded in the game that online component has to be is rarely going to be a simple matter to determine.
I don't really see a good solution to this at the moment, sadly.
[+] [-] Hokusai|4 years ago|reply
How many kilobytes takes too store ownership data? I can just imagine that tracking data is thousands of times bigger.
> The crazy thing about this is that it’s perfectly legal for video game companies to delete your account regardless of whether you’ve spend zero or a thousand dollars on their games
It's a shame that we are going to fight for our digital rights because currently we have almost none because justice does not understand technology.
[+] [-] amarshall|4 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com [2]: https://www.gog.com
[+] [-] yason|4 years ago|reply
Now, 30 years from now or roughly 2050, there will be a cultural and historical blackout because anything people are "buying" now are basically revokable privileges to temporarily hire games, music, and movies. There will be no single server up and running to provide today's games for people who are today young but will be middle-aged few decades from now. And, even before that, judging based on Ubisoft it looks like the "purchases" will be long gone before the service itself.
What a waste.
[+] [-] Havoc|4 years ago|reply
>“Please be reassured that Ubisoft does not automatically close inactive accounts,”
but
>inactivity warning from Ubisoft in his spam folder dated January 20th. The email stated that his account had been temporarily shut down and will be permanently closed if he didn’t click the provided link within 30 days.
So not automatic closures...but there is a live system to automate it?
[+] [-] udp|4 years ago|reply
I pre-ordered the latest Assassin’s Creed directly from Ubisoft thinking it was better than buying it from Amazon. It got delivered to the wrong address, so I opened a ticket. They ignored the ticket for weeks despite me sending follow ups every few days, so I eventually raised a dispute with PayPal to get a refund, which I received.
Ubisoft finally responded to the ticket at that point, saying that I “may have issues making purchases from the store in the future” due to the reversed payment. So basically, they no longer want me as a customer because I tried to get a refund for a game they failed to deliver.
[+] [-] paxys|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehsankia|4 years ago|reply
Obviously it's not great that the ToS has wording protecting Ubisoft's ass against such mistake, but again, everyone here is just taking the word of this one person as gospel, but I don't really see any solid evidence provided.
[+] [-] justinclift|4 years ago|reply
Oh wow. That 1k of database data must really be dragging down their system.
/s
Seriously, what kind of child's-first-attempt-to-use-a-database system are they using where this is even a consideration? :(
[+] [-] devoutsalsa|4 years ago|reply
</sarcasm>
When I contracting at a large tech company, so had to implement a service that would delete any personally identifying information from the database for users that had been inactive for more than 18 months. Essentially this meant dynamically scanning the entire database schema for any columns that had a user ID and deleting any matching records. It was kind of a fun project.
[+] [-] Forricide|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] low_tech_love|4 years ago|reply
“We can’t recover the games after the account is closed.”
Noice.
[+] [-] efitz|4 years ago|reply
It’s not so clear when the digital work requires ongoing effort from the provider, as in an online game that requires the provider to operate servers. In that case I think that providers should either be forced to provide the service as a rental instead of a “purchase”, or the provider should be forced to provide all information and code necessary for third parties to operate compatible servers.
[+] [-] FpUser|4 years ago|reply
I have a proposal. Let's extend the same courtesy the other way around. If I feel that company had stolen / interfered with enjoyment of my right to do certain things (which they in effect did) why don't police upon my complaint go and stick their CEO/Owner to jail with no bail and let them wait till the dust settles.
[+] [-] Jorengarenar|4 years ago|reply
I frickin <3 Ubi /s
[+] [-] lobocinza|4 years ago|reply
When you "buy" a game you are paying for convenience, for server access, for updates & support, and for other platform services like storing saves at cloud. You don't own a thing and pirating a game while illegal is trivial.
The issue here was putting money on a shitty service that does not care about it's customers experience. I have spent thousands of dollars on Steam. I don't expect my account to be terminated after 1 year of activity but I also don't expect it to last forever and to be able to pass it to descendants.
[+] [-] gravypod|4 years ago|reply
A less legally sound argument for why games as a service shouldn't be allowed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw
Ross is very odd but his opinions on this topic align greatly with my personal sentiment.
[+] [-] mouzogu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philliphaydon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toper-centage|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timvisee|4 years ago|reply
Is there something I can do about this? This is unclear to me.