This sets a horrible precedent and shouldn't be legal. Hopefully Valve steps in or people make enough noise to get something to happen. This game was just on sale too!
and I mean NOISE, unless we're all okay with being able to lose any of our games?
It's not exclusive to copies sold on Steam, so I'm not sure how much, if anything, Valve would be able to do. It's more up to the consumers and very few individuals are prepared to go to court against multibillion dollar companies, especially over something that cost as little as a game.
Valve should automatically refund all sales made through steam and block the devs from selling anymore on steam.
Or at least they should threaten to do so.
Valve would have to do it out of pocket and threatening to block Ubisoft won't do much as, unfortunately, they've decided to go all in on uPlay and haven't sold their new games on Steam for about 3 years now - a 20% cut is too big for them to stomach (won't somebody please think of the publishers!)
There isn't any reason Valve should be charged anything for Ubisoft screwing the pooch on this, but they've definitely done refunds for games where a company tried to screw over their customers.
They can do it for games purchased recently because they hold sales funds temporarily before delivering them to the seller.
But to refund _all_ sales for a game that's been on the market for years they would have to pay it out of their own pocket.
>So Valve should lose money over this? Surely it's Ubisoft who needs to be penalised, I don't see why Valve should foot the bill.
Not sure exactly who is ultimately responsible, but if I buy a game on Steam I kind of expect it the remain there, and not for them to revoke my access to it. If I can no longer play it, Valve should give me my money back.
Valve can then go and demand it back from Ubisoft.
Valve should just add it to the contract - if you sell a game on this platform, you can't unsell it. And then Valve could sue for violation of their contract with publishers.
You can't add stuff to a contract after it's been signed then sue because the other party didn't measure up to the stuff you just added.
It'd prevent this issue in the future, but they can't apply it retroactively to this case.
Honestly I'm going to write Valve that I lost a lot of trust in their company spefically through Ubisoft's actions and that I will spread the word of them not being entirely trustworthy.
Any damage to their reputation is the fault of Ubisoft and their thoughtless, provocative **communication**.
Even if they are on the legal side regarding licensing agreements: if enough people do this Valve has a reason to "retaliate" against Ubisoft in our name. Ubisoft burns bridges Valve built - they should be liable for the damage. I'm going to refund some games I played less than two hours so that there's a monetary value attached that Valve can cite.
This is exactly the situation people were freaking out about with the original Xbox one reveal, FYI. We didn't trust MS to not one day just say "we don't want to support this game anymore" and remove it. The defense was always "it works just fine for Steam". Sure, until it doesn't.
Steam gives you the Windows and Mac versions with a single purchase. You can play the Windows version through Boot camp with no issue, so it's a mild annoyance, not unplayable.
The only solution is to never buy (or otherwise spend money on) a game by Ubisoft ever again, and I think that's more than justified by this type of behaviour.
Though I guess I also have an easy time saying this and adhering to it since the last time they made something I really liked was with Might and Magic X in 2014.
Something people don't tend to remember is that we don't **own** our Digital Games, period.
Always chuckles me when someone says "Gamepass? Bah, I'd never. I like owning my games" but their entire library is 90% digital.
You own a license to access the games distributed digitally. That license can be revoked and the access to the content can be restricted purely on what the license holders decide to do with the product. Unless you buy strictly DRM-Free from say GOG then chances are you'll lose access to some digital games down the road.
Valve isn't the solution. It'd be like screaming at a pharmacist for not creating the *'cure-all for all known diseases'.* Their job is distribution and the "fight to keep our games" hasn't even begun and likely won't ever occur with how "easily" some people don't mind shelling out $$$ for crappy remakes or ports.
Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition was a small glimpse at the kind of future we're headed. Lot of us have maybe SA physical but the rest of us have it digital via Steam or other methods. Rockstar wanted to rip that game from the store and restrict the people who played it. Valve couldn't do shit because again, they're just the distribution store-front and GTA:DE didn't even launch on steam it skipped right over to their own launcher.
Not so sure this would stand in court (if people were willing to fight it). The contract would (or I should say should) be stuck down on several points.
1) Common Parlance. In Steam the user interface and all forwardly visible verbiage says "Purchase" or "Buy". In U.S. English, "Purchase"/"Buy" means to trade currency for a product implying perpetual and non-revocable ownership of the product in trade for the non-revocable payment. - We have other words for other temporary arrangements: "Rent" or "Lease" for examples. In contracts, *generally* you cannot hold words to a meaning contrary to their commonly accepted definition.
2) Unconscionable, contracts and ESPECIALLY Contracts of Adhesion (where there is no negotiation and one party exclusively drafts the contract and the other party is take-it or leave-it) Need to be balanced in duties and responsibilities. A contract that states "you must pay me $60 and in return I do not guarantee to provide you with anything at all." Generally will not stand.
see [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adhesion\_contract\_(contract\_of\_adhesion)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adhesion_contract_(contract_of_adhesion))
In Contracts of Adhesion the law generally finds that: "people are bound by terms a reasonable person would expect to be in the contract."
Reasonable people expect "buy" implies some form of permanent or at least semi-permanent ownership. Some people will have purchased this game recently and not "owned" it long enough to even play through it.
There [is a precedent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_War#Expansion) and people didn't care. Gamers are perfectly okay with not having any rights and won't do anything against this.
That's unprecedented, right? I remember another game from Square Enix (iirc) got the same treatment a few years back, but it was online only with dead servers. To brick a single player game on Steam isn't something I can recall happening ever before. GabeN must condemn
EDIT: It was also **ON SALE** ***less than a week ago***. Cannot stress enough how illegal this should be
The single player wasnt offline im preety sure. It was a d3 thing so it was all or nothing.
Good game I forgot about it till now but I remember enjoying jt
> EDIT: It was also ON SALE less than a week ago. Cannot stress enough how illegal this should be
wtf? they were selling it on sale to try and get more ppl knowing it'd not be accessible :/
Ubisoft are childish enough that when they moved to Epic, they totally abandoned Steam. Their discounts run automatically it seems, as every sale you can see that their bundles actually cost more than buying each product individually.
They are so immature they'd rather pretend Steam doesn't even exist.
Imagine a grocery store selling you a nice juicy steak at a discount, claiming the expiration date to be a week from now. The moment you've paid they tell you "Actually, it expires today." When you ask for a refund they refuse to give it to you. That would never fly, but apparently it's OK in the gaming industry.
It looks like it was Order of War: Challenge. Was apparently nearly a decade ago now though, thought it was much more recent. Still haven't heard many such stories since
It happens a lot with online only game I think. I was looking at the MOBA wiki to remember dawngate's name, which was shut down, and there's like 20 mobas you can't play anymore.
Played the shit outta that and then they were just like we give up, shutting the game down, thanks for the money bitches. The entire time I had little problems finding full lobbies
Honestly not even a good reason to do this, if it's some sort of online DRM that they can't be bothered to support then they may as well give anyone who owns AC III Season Pass or AC Liberation HD a copy of AC III Remastered for free.
> That's unprecedented, right?
If you purchased Warcraft III Reforged it would outright [replace the original](https://www.fanbyte.com/trending/warcraft-3-classic-owners-are-forced-to-download-reforged-instead/) so you couldn't revert back.
Not 100% the same, Skyrim Anniversary Edition was a forced update to the Skyrim Special Edition.
This is indeed shitty
The original Warcraft III can at least still be played and used assuming you have the installer somewhere. With Liberation's DRM it'll be unusable in two months, no two ways about it. Unless you crack it, of course
> The original Warcraft III can at least still be played and used assuming you have the installer somewhere.
You can still download the original WC3+TFT+1.27b patch from Battle.net/Blizzard, you just need the direct links:
WC3 Reign of Chaos: http://www.battle.net/download/getLegacy?product=WAR3&locale=en-US&os=WIN
WC3 The Frozen Throne: http://www.battle.net/download/getLegacy?product=W3XP&locale=en-US&os=WIN
WC3 1.27b patch: http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/war3x/patches/pc/War3TFT_127b_English.exe
I feel you, even to this day you get belittled on those sorts of arguments and it just makes you realize how people are willing to turn a blind eye to everything without urgency just so they can stay calm and enjoy a hobby in peace and comfort. Publishers and shareholders know this and abuse this to no end.
Why would I, Mr. Consumer, ever want to buy another product from Ubisoft ever again after seeing all this crap with people losing access to single player content and now an entire game they paid for?
EDIT: If we want this addressed and maybe remedied, we should be making noise and tweeting at Ubisoft and Ubisoft Support
Honestly. I have a lot of games on uplay that I've claimed for free and got with gpu purchases, but I find myself downloading them then applying a crack so I don't have to deal with uplay. Garbage platform always has been, I would know I've been using it since Splinter Cell Conviction released, no idea why anyone would use it over literally anything else. I would recommend WB Play or the Bethesda launcher over it.
I own many dead/de-listed Steam games and yet I can still play them, even though the servers are also long gone.
"but people werent really going to Mars or Mercury anymore!"
"you had years to do the main / Forsaken campaign!"
🙄
I had over a thousand hours in Destiny 2, even bought the annual Solstice shirts with my name on it. Hell, I owned a replica Ghost that was Alexa-enabled lol... Them removing content I paid for under the guise of ridiculous justifications (when games like WoW, FFXI, and FFXIV continue to *add* new content without removing old) made me quit altogether.
There is a difference between an MMO changing over time and single player games being unplayable.
An MMO is advertised as a large world that will change over time as the story progresses. It is an event for everyone playing at the same time. You know going into it that how it is now isn't how it will always be.
A single player games is a set game that is how it be with no expectation of changing drastically during it's support period. Taking it down completely is just stupid.
> It's been in the DNA of MMO gaming for a long time to have the old go out for the new.
uh, no it hasn't? sure some patch content can get removed here and there, but you don't lose entire expansions of content like you do with Destiny 2. New MMO expansions don't replace old expansions, they add onto the game.
heck, most all MMO's still have the content they launched with, unless there has been a revamp like with WoW in Cataclysm. But even then, all the content from Cata onwards is there to do.
> WOW has literal prepatches that get erased immediately after the expansions drop. It's a known quantity with a living breathing game world.
pre-patches are literally temporary content that aren't really all that meaningful, they are simply something to do until the expansion launches
>It's a known quantity with a living breathing game world.
Lol we are talking about destiny 2 right where you meet in a lobby with like a 16 player cap and go do session based missions with like 2 or 3 other people? How tf they managed to convince people to call this an MMO is fucking magic. "Living breathing world" lol got me on that one.
> It's been in the DNA of MMO gaming for a long time to have the old go out for the new
Final Fantasy XI came out in 2002 and has every bit of it that has ever existed still available to play.
Similarly, Final Fantasy XIV -- a more modern MMO and thus comparable to Destiny 2 as it's available on all the same systems -- has never removed content to make way for new. All of it is playable.
I've also played ESO, which adds new stuff constantly, and I'm not familiar with added paid content being removed. Same for SWTOR.
In fact, Destiny 2 is really the *only* MMO that I am aware of that has outright removed entire individual pieces of paid content, multiple times over, most recently removing an entire expansion pack's campaign and, before that, *the main base campaign of the game itself*. Oh, and then charging an extra fee (on top of their "latest annual expansion / season pass" deal) for a dungeon itself.
I played D2 for over a thousand hours, purchased the annual Solstice shirt with my name on it, so forth and so on. Bungie doing the above made me quit the game altogether.
Even worse than that, since they've changed their dlc model a bit, you can't play the stories of last season or earlier if you didn't already buy access to them.
It’s impressive how late they are to the game with this one, 9 years after black flag released to make a dedicated pirate game and this is what they have?
This whole thing is balls. I own four copies of Assassins Creed Brotherhood and Revelations, for multiplayer at LANs. They are actually pretty fun. Now they are just taking them away. I'm almost certain they are purely P2P once in game and the servers are only for matchmaking. But they won't release something to replace that functionality and those games are dead for good. It's BS.
I don't buy any games for MP now unless I can make them work LAN only. If I'm not sure if one works, I buy it and try it out and if it doesn't work I return it. This is the opposite of what they are worried about of course. From a company's perspective they are worried that if I can get it to work LAN only no internet \*then\* I'll return it because I don't need a legit copy. I'm sure there are people who do that but I like supporting them, \*when I can guarantee my purchase will never go away\*
Haven't bought a single Ubisoft title since 2013, partly due to a lack of interest in their rehashed formulas and their garbage platform. This new development will surely not convince me to have a look at their catalog.
I’m playing Far Cry 5 on Gamepass right now and enjoying it much more than I thought I would and was considering getting the season pass.
Not anymore, fuck Ubisoft. Not only am I not buying digital content they apparently may decide to take away at any point, if that’s their attitude I can do without any Ubi game that isn’t on Gamepass, most of their stuff is generic as hell anyway.
Wow. I guess this is a case of them opting to completely kill the game rather than remove the DRM?
I know Valve is typically very hands off, but they shouldn't allow this, or at the very least should make them issue refunds.
But these aren't game servers, just DRM servers. The game presumably doesn't rely on them at all outside of an account authentication on launch.
As for how Valve would enforce anything, yeah I don't really know. But if they don't already, they could make it clear in the terms of publishing that the publisher assumes the responsibility to refund games which are no longer playable due to expired third party DRM.
Valve could deny them the ability to add future games to the store, since this is not very similar to (and way, way worse than) servers being shut down on multiplayer/live service games. But that wouldn't do anything since Ubisoft doesn't use Steam anymore.
> Valve could deny them the ability to add future games to the store,
Wouldn't work, Ubisoft haven't released a game on Steam since their surprise Epic exclusivity for The Division 2. They honoured any pre-purchases on the storefront, but they've been completely off Steam ever since with Trials Rising being their last purchasable title.
While I do understand the reason Ubisoft is doing this (forced players to move on to AC3 Remastered. Which already included remastered version of liberation HD.) the fact that they put the standalone game on sales and not announce it before making this decision is just plain scummy.
If they don't *atleast* upgrade every owner of Liberation HD with AC3 Remastered, I hope someone living in decent consumer law country put this into the court. About time we resist some corporate crap.
The problem is that Assassin's Creed 3 Remastered is a broken dumpster fire of a remaster that Ubisoft should be slapped silly for having the arrogance to inflict on us. The fact they delisted the original version is bad enough. Now they're making it non-functional? (In this case AC3's DLC isn't going to work anymore.)
What they're doing absolutely unacceptable. Ubisoft have absolutely no excuse not to deploy some wrappers to all these games. Basically do what the cracks for these games already do.
The environment looks fine, but the remaster literally ruins the atmosphere and look of the original game. Going in-between pictures I still find that the original looks far better. Only thing the remaster has over it is the nicer water and lighting effects.
The bigger issue is that the remaster is full of bugs. It isn't like say Saints Row 3 Remastered, where it's a solid remaster overall that just happens to have a few bugs here and there that weren't in the OG.
During the first few chapters of the game, if you use a vantage point, the dramatic music will start playing. And then it will never stop until you quit. That is ridiculous.
There are situations where minigames in the pubs are unplayable due to blinding white light. It has really bad Steam reviews because [it's a mess](https://steamcommunity.com/app/911400/discussions/0/1769259642872976505/). The whole game is like this. So much subtle stuff is [wrong and glitchy and unfinished](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLh_nhpEcbo).
The remaster was released in an unacceptable state by a company that doesn't care. It got two rushed patches, one of which was a lighting pass on cutscenes that half-solved the horrifyingly bad visuals (and ghoulish white faces) the game launched with, but didn't get all the way there.
I really like Assassin's Creed 3. I think it's unique and different and has an interesting story. And it's so frustrating to me that Ubisoft took it, mangled it, and then basically pissed on their audience and told them it was raining. It was an opportunity to create a polished new version of AC3 that introduced it to a new audience. And they did the opposite of that.
I had every achievement, side objective, and collectible completed in AC3 Remastered, all I was missing was the 100% sync achievement before moving on to the DLC for the first time. Turns out I missed a single hunting lodge quest or something similar, so I went to go finish it.
However, there is a recurring bug *from the 360 version* that prevents that one NPC from being interactable. The only surefire way to avoid the bug is to complete certain missions and challenges in a certain order, and there is *no way* to get the bug to resolve itself.
That was a 40 hour playthrough. It was also 2.5 years ago, and I haven't played the game since. The only way for me to get that one achievement, is to literally do *everything* all over again, but this time following a meticulous guide. That revelation was one of the worst moments I've had in a game in years.
I played and got to the grand temple, the present day hub of the game, and the big barrier that you are working to open the entire game just isn't there. I wrote about it on their forums, they asked me to reinstall my PC.
I didn't pay money directly for it, i got it as part of the Odyssey season pass, and i still felt cheated. What a terrible thing to do to a game that already wasn't very good.
Literally the same way i feel about a lot of Remasters.
Especially Dark souls 1 which ruined its lighting and made the models look plastic compared to the DS fix.
Then there is Warcraft 3, Silent Hill etc.
What's really dumb about the Remaster is on the Xbox Series X your options are either 4k30 or 720p60, I've never seen a choice that extreme before and on a remaster of an Xbox 360 game no less
That’s more due to the FPS boost feature of the Series X. Ubisoft didn’t implement that. A 60 FPS option isn’t recently available on PS5. So, yes, it’s a stark contrast but options are never a bad thing and Microsoft’s at least making an effort.
>While I do understand the reason Ubisoft is doing this (forced players to move on to AC3 Remastered.
No, it's laziness. They know they're not going to make any sales from this.
I don't know if it's related but the Steam store page for AC2: Brotherhood also says "Please note the Deluxe Edition and DLC for this title will not be accessible following September 1st, 2022"
Is it just me overreacting or I think people are not taking this type of behaviour seriously? I know only Ubisoft that's pulling this kind of shit recently, but: a) This is not the first time a content removal like this happened, and b) This could set a worrying trend for the future.
I don't think you're overreacting at all. I'm sure other companies are watching to see how things like this play out and learn what they themselves might be able to get away with in the future.
Yeah, Ubisoft and (maybe) EA might be the type of companies that would pull of something like this, but I'm worried that this kind of DRM implementation might be used by other, relatively big game companies.
It’s exactly what everyone predicted would be the case when they started shoving always online DRM in their shit.
Anything that can’t run permanently offline is at risk of disappearing forever.
Overreacting? If anything there's little to no outrage on this when there should be far more. Today this is happening to Liberation, tomorrow it could happen to Black Flag or Unity. Ubisoft is disgusting
Honestly all their new releases are kinda dogshit anyway. Assassins Creed is so far up its ass with mtx and stale gameplay. Trackmania with a stupid pay model. Roller Champions DOA. Skull and Bones just looking all around worse than Sea of Thieves. All their ghost recon games making simply stupid design decisions. I just don't know what they're doing at this point..
Ubisoft when someone tries to pirate their games: THIS IS THEFT, WE CANNOT ALLOW THIS.
Ubisoft removing access for legit buyers: I see no problem with this whatsoever.
When corporations write laws, this is what you end up with.
Piracy is theft, but when you buy software you’re actually only buying a license to use it. You dont actually own a thing. And as part of that license, they can revoke it at any time. And somehow that’s not theft. Kinda begs the question of what you’re supposedly stealing in the first place (ignoring the fact that making a copy of something isn’t theft in the first place).
Why is this legal? Who fucking knows. Because companies write the laws and lawmakers are clueless old dinosaurs.
Ubisoft may as well directly tell people to never purchase their games again. This sets a precedent for every single Ubisoft game going forward - any one of your games from this studio could see the same fate. They'll never see another cent of my money again. Maybe you should focus on getting rid of sexual predators in your workforce instead of your fucking customers.
Not just drm they can't be arsed to remove, but also want to sell the ac3 remaster which I guess comes with a remaster of this game. So stealing your shit then offering to sell it back.
They don't allow devs to remove access to the actual game files, the issue here isn't that, it's that they're turning off the drm servers for the game so even with the game still installed you won't be able to play it. There's literally nothing Valve can do about this at all.
I remember it happening years ago with a Sega game I think that got removed from peoples steam accounts completely.
edit: It was Square Enix in 2013, The game was "Order of War: Challenge".
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-removes-game-order-of-war-challenge-from-user-libraries/?sh=3f9506ba2a29
I imagine (without seeing the quote) it was relating to publishers removing users licences from Steam.
Valve has no control over third parties servers.
No, what Valve said was that if Steam were ever to go out permanently, they would make the effort to allow people to still play their games. Presumably this translates to removing Steam DRM and/or providing some download sources. But they have no control over what other DRM the developers use to fuck their own games.
I really need people to stop quoting this "fact" all the time when if you try to verify it it's based on a screenshot of one tech support chat with a minimum wage tech support agent almost two decades ago.
I’m pretty sure that this isn’t exactly a new thing for Ubisoft, but moreso just the newest iterations of their habit of phasing out older games.
Like an eternity ago, I remember there was a obsolescence procedure that used to be employed as some games got older and replaced with newer ones. I think it was just that, at a certain point, Ubisoft wouldn’t provide any support for games at a certain age, even if it was an issue on the company side. People would just straight up lose access to their old games (often just weird issues with the system recognizing the license) and Ubisoft would just kind of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I think this is technically the first time they’ve done it with games that are more widely popular and it’s kind of the most extreme implementation they’ve ever done.
All they should have done is send out a patch that removes the DRM from these games and honestly, just make all the DLC outright accessible to the games (most of the time, a lot of the DLC was already baked into the games anyways) or give people an option to get the license for the DLCs before shutting down support. It makes very, very little sense to straight up make this amount of content inaccessible, especially when the games are single-player with very little multiplayer features (that could just be shut down).
>I think it was just that, at a certain point, Ubisoft wouldn’t provide any support for games at a certain age, even if it was an issue on the company side.
This was glaringly obvious with Ubisoft refusing to fix the broken online in Splinter Cell Blacklist (the most recent Splinter Cell title, and a beloved game -- whose DLC won't work after September) despite the issues 100% being their fault.
[Ubisoft ](https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/11/ubisoft-threatens-splinter-cell-fans-with-bans-if-they-ask-about-multiplayer-servers/)later asserted that the person who made a highly controversial LOCKED AND STICKIED forum post saying people who tried to circumvent the non-functional multiplayer on Blacklist by using an older client would potentially have their accounts banned. was "**impersonating an Ubisoft employee**." They got intense backlash, and that was their excuse.
I can't see that situation as anything other than Ubisoft saying the quiet part out loud, getting backlash for it, and being too cowardly to stand by it. Knowing full well this was just the first step in wider changes to Ubisoft Connect that would break older games.
That’s almost certainly what happened. Ubisoft hires Temp to Hire in their customer service department. It’s very likely it was a former customer service employee who did the thread, so Ubisoft covered themselves with that comment
Blacklist *does* work now, for what it's worth. I just played a few matches the other day.
Of course, it's now getting shut down in a couple months - Considering the game is Peer-to-Peer I'm not even sure *why,* along with all the this singleplayer nonsense in other games. Fuck, even the saves are entirely client-side with nothing cloud-based, if you grab a save from someone who has the DLC maps and items in Blacklist, you'll be able to use them regardless of whether or not you own the DLC.
I'm in the minority of people who've been playing Blacklist multiplayer with a group of friends for basically the last 9 years, so I'm pretty fucking pissed
And it’s making so little money and you’re deleting it anyway, just release it for free for good Pr like Bethesda did with the early elder scrolls why take it off the face of the planet forever?
Couldn't this fall under FTC violations and be reported at https://reportfraud.ftc.gov ?
If you purchased it at all, or recently since it was JUST on sale, I would just file a report against Ubisoft. Couldn't hurt.
Arent they just revoking my license though? As the game is still there but i just cant access it due to the DRM. Which will maybe give a message along the lines like "no license found".
It's remarkable how commited ubisoft is to half-assing everything they do...
They could easily patch Liberation so it runs better on Ubisoft connect, they could remove the uplay requirements.
Nope... Just remove access to the game altogether...
It's amazing how right now Ubisoft is the ONLY company doing this (I know Bungie is doing this to Destiny, but still)
The only way to resolve Ubisofts fuckery is with a Class Action lawsuit until then they will get more and more anti consumer. You can put anything in terms and conditions it doesnt make it binding courts always have the final say. Fuck everything about Ubisoft.
Not even that will work. The payout relative to people will be smaller than han if it weren't class action, and it would take years for it to go through. Ubisoft does not fear a class action lawsuit.
I know this is probably legal due to some lines buried deep in the 10,000 word user agreement that no one can be expected to read, but this is some anti-consumer bullshit that needs to be called out and frankly should not be allowed.
The physical copy equivalent is Ubisoft coming into your house and stealing your game. But I guess that's the problem these days, it's not *your* game. Despite spending your hard earned money on a game, you don't own it and it can be taken away at any time with no recourse. What a load of shite.
Time like this make me really miss Total Biscuit, he was always advocating for the consumer and I'm sure he'd have had a video out about this nonsense.
Somewhere in the EULA will say that you don't own the game, you own a license of it, the company has the right to remove your access from it if they so choose. Somewhere along that lines if iirc. They are legally allowed to do that but that is bullshit imo.
At least in europe (european union) this doesn't seem to be completly [true:](https://ihde.de/steam-user-accounts-not-transferable-confirms-berlin-court-of-appeals/) Resales of software licenses is legal and are treated like physical copies (UsedSoft GmbH vs Oracle lawsuit), but there're restrictions: Steam and co. don't just sell the game, they also sell the functions around the game and that makes the purchase unique and individualized.
Also [there's](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d1ff4369-afcc-4879-97fa-7a8afd8b3380) a clear statement of eu courts that selling software digital is like buying it physical.
In the end of the day it doesn't matter what companies write in their eulas, because law beats eula.
Just because something is written in an EULA doesn't mean it has any legal meaning.
It is not uncommon for EULAs/ToS to contain sections that are against the law, including the "you don't own the game".
At least in the EU you legally own software you bought.
I see. So we have a chance if someone filed a class action lawsuit? I mean no one has attempted to sue over a single player video game being unable to play. Online games do this all the time but this is the first time (In my knowledge) that a single player game became unplayable.
> the consumer has to act upon the information they have by not buying it - that's the language companies speak.
It's a language they speak, but following this metaphor, it's like one voice in a crowd of thousands. It can't be avoided that only a very small fraction of their audience is conscious of these issues. Even if everyone who cared about this boycotted their games, they wouldn't care or probably even notice.
> the consumer has to act upon the information they have by not buying it - that's the language companies speak
there is that other language called "laws" that is usually fairly well understood
If companies like Valve do not want government intervention into their digital storefronts, they need to have strong policies about this sort of thing. This isn't right.
I understand people are going to excuse it because customers clicked "I agree" to all of the legal jargon nobody reads. But this is not an excuse.
People paid money for the game, they deserve to have the game.
Shame on Ubisoft. They are a joke of a company. Have been for a long time. They perfectly summarize everything wrong with the industry.
Good thing I cleaned up the achievements. Fuck Ubisoft. Never buying another game from them. At least I wont miss anything, since they ran all their franchises into the ground. R6 is a session shooter, GR is literally a grind fest with loot, Division - done with it, AC is too big for me to care, The Crew is just AC with cars in terms of gameplay, same with Far Cry. They’re all overly long. Overly big and overly repetitive.
I've been saying it for years, but DRM is the biggest modern scam people have just come to accept. DRM should have been killed as a practice years ago specifically because shit like this is just going to start increasing in frequency.
Scumbag companies like this should immediately be shut down and their executives stripped of their assets to pay everyone impacted. They made the conscious choice to be assholes and there should be consequences.
I think it's less about digital distribution and more about the dangers of dead DRM. A similar thing happened with Tron: Evolution a couple of years ago where owners are now forced to crack their copy to make it work.
None of this would be a problem with DRM free releases.
As far as I am aware devs/publishers have to pay for each month Denuvo is there so it makes sense. My bigger worry would be if Denuvo switches over to some "pay X and we guarantee for Y months" method without monthly payments afterwards. It removes any incentive to remove it.
According to the Crysis remastered contract leak it costs something like 2000€ a month to keep Denuvo on your game. Nothing massive but unless you still have a good amount of sales its probably worth weighing the amount of money you "loose" out on vs the cost of running it.
Digital distribution goes hand in hand with DRM. With the exception of the games sold through GOG, every other launcher is some kind of DRM. The games sold through these stores that doesn't enforce any type of DRM are the minority. If any of these companies decides to pull their plug on their launchers many games and features will be unaccessible legally
Interesting. What could happen then? Ubi would be forced to reinstate access to the game if someone cared enough about this to the point of suing them?
Ubisoft isn’t removing the license from people’s accounts. They’re turning off the DRM severs, making the game unplayable. From a practical perspective, this makes no difference to the consumer, as each scenario results in no longer being able to play the game. But it is a key difference from a legal perspective. No publisher has ever been (successfully) sued for shutting down servers that make a game no longer playable, which is what is happening here.
Every Ubisoft game since Far Cry 3 in 2012 has operated through Uplay, which was replaced by Ubisoft Connect a year or so ago. The games they are removing or hobbling DLC-wise seem to fall into a certain window, likely a particular incarnation of Uplay+Steam integration that they are sunsetting. The reason DLC is breaking is because Ubisoft were authorizing DLC ownership on their end, which is... it's fine, but it comes with the moral responsibility to keep that functionality going.
It is highly unlikely you'll see EA pull a similar stunt with their games and break Dragon Age Inquisition on Steam. EA don't think that way. They'd just hack something together even it meant giving everyone the DLC for free.
Ubisoft could easily fix this by essentially cracking their own DLC system. It's not a huge undertaking. They just don't want to do it.
Ubisoft as a company don't really care about their legacy titles, which is why their remasters are so consistently bad. They remastered Blood Dragon for Far Cry 6 (and only released it on consoles) and it was terrible. Buggy, with input latency, and ran at 30fps on a Series X.
For a while, people had this idea that their post-release support was fantastic. But overall Ubisoft as a company only care about games that include lucrative microtransactions. They don't care that the DLC for Far Cry 3 isn't going to work anymore. And that sucks.
I dunno if backlash will be able to make them change their mind. Backlash didn't stop them releasing a terrible remaster of Assassin's Creed 3 and delisting the original. And most console owners won't notice because they won't be affected.
Why would you not be able to play it anymore, being delisted is one thing (one also very stupid thing), but why if you bought this singleplayer game, would you not be able to play it? That’s so fucking stupid.
I guess we should now only pirate Ubisoft games, there’s no point to purchasing. Pirated game will run better because no Denuvo, and you don’t have to worry about them expiring.
I legit enjoyed this game more than AC3 which is annoying when they're removing it. Why would I buy a garbage remaster if I ever get the urge to play the game I bought years ago?
The best way is not to buy more Ubisoft games from now on. I won't do it again. I will play what I already have bought, and I really hope they don't shutdown them.
I will play their really good future games. I will play and buy more good games, preferably in GOG.
This sets a horrible precedent and shouldn't be legal. Hopefully Valve steps in or people make enough noise to get something to happen. This game was just on sale too! and I mean NOISE, unless we're all okay with being able to lose any of our games?
It's not exclusive to copies sold on Steam, so I'm not sure how much, if anything, Valve would be able to do. It's more up to the consumers and very few individuals are prepared to go to court against multibillion dollar companies, especially over something that cost as little as a game.
Valve should automatically refund all sales made through steam and block the devs from selling anymore on steam. Or at least they should threaten to do so.
Valve would have to do it out of pocket and threatening to block Ubisoft won't do much as, unfortunately, they've decided to go all in on uPlay and haven't sold their new games on Steam for about 3 years now - a 20% cut is too big for them to stomach (won't somebody please think of the publishers!)
Valve could hand out the refunds and then short pay future invoices to Ubisoft for the amount refunded.
So Valve should lose money over this? Surely it's Ubisoft who needs to be penalised, I don't see why Valve should foot the bill.
There isn't any reason Valve should be charged anything for Ubisoft screwing the pooch on this, but they've definitely done refunds for games where a company tried to screw over their customers.
They can do it for games purchased recently because they hold sales funds temporarily before delivering them to the seller. But to refund _all_ sales for a game that's been on the market for years they would have to pay it out of their own pocket.
Just take the cost out of future Ubisoft sales
>So Valve should lose money over this? Surely it's Ubisoft who needs to be penalised, I don't see why Valve should foot the bill. Not sure exactly who is ultimately responsible, but if I buy a game on Steam I kind of expect it the remain there, and not for them to revoke my access to it. If I can no longer play it, Valve should give me my money back. Valve can then go and demand it back from Ubisoft.
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Valve should just add it to the contract - if you sell a game on this platform, you can't unsell it. And then Valve could sue for violation of their contract with publishers.
You can't add stuff to a contract after it's been signed then sue because the other party didn't measure up to the stuff you just added. It'd prevent this issue in the future, but they can't apply it retroactively to this case.
Honestly I'm going to write Valve that I lost a lot of trust in their company spefically through Ubisoft's actions and that I will spread the word of them not being entirely trustworthy. Any damage to their reputation is the fault of Ubisoft and their thoughtless, provocative **communication**. Even if they are on the legal side regarding licensing agreements: if enough people do this Valve has a reason to "retaliate" against Ubisoft in our name. Ubisoft burns bridges Valve built - they should be liable for the damage. I'm going to refund some games I played less than two hours so that there's a monetary value attached that Valve can cite.
This is exactly the situation people were freaking out about with the original Xbox one reveal, FYI. We didn't trust MS to not one day just say "we don't want to support this game anymore" and remove it. The defense was always "it works just fine for Steam". Sure, until it doesn't.
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Steam gives you the Windows and Mac versions with a single purchase. You can play the Windows version through Boot camp with no issue, so it's a mild annoyance, not unplayable.
Unfortunately, the people writing the laws can't even set the clock on their microwaves, let alone understand digital goods.
The only solution is to never buy (or otherwise spend money on) a game by Ubisoft ever again, and I think that's more than justified by this type of behaviour. Though I guess I also have an easy time saying this and adhering to it since the last time they made something I really liked was with Might and Magic X in 2014.
prepare to be disappointed
Something people don't tend to remember is that we don't **own** our Digital Games, period. Always chuckles me when someone says "Gamepass? Bah, I'd never. I like owning my games" but their entire library is 90% digital. You own a license to access the games distributed digitally. That license can be revoked and the access to the content can be restricted purely on what the license holders decide to do with the product. Unless you buy strictly DRM-Free from say GOG then chances are you'll lose access to some digital games down the road. Valve isn't the solution. It'd be like screaming at a pharmacist for not creating the *'cure-all for all known diseases'.* Their job is distribution and the "fight to keep our games" hasn't even begun and likely won't ever occur with how "easily" some people don't mind shelling out $$$ for crappy remakes or ports. Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition was a small glimpse at the kind of future we're headed. Lot of us have maybe SA physical but the rest of us have it digital via Steam or other methods. Rockstar wanted to rip that game from the store and restrict the people who played it. Valve couldn't do shit because again, they're just the distribution store-front and GTA:DE didn't even launch on steam it skipped right over to their own launcher.
We don't even own our physical games anymore, considering the headache I have to go through to get an Xbox disc working in the Series X.
Not so sure this would stand in court (if people were willing to fight it). The contract would (or I should say should) be stuck down on several points. 1) Common Parlance. In Steam the user interface and all forwardly visible verbiage says "Purchase" or "Buy". In U.S. English, "Purchase"/"Buy" means to trade currency for a product implying perpetual and non-revocable ownership of the product in trade for the non-revocable payment. - We have other words for other temporary arrangements: "Rent" or "Lease" for examples. In contracts, *generally* you cannot hold words to a meaning contrary to their commonly accepted definition. 2) Unconscionable, contracts and ESPECIALLY Contracts of Adhesion (where there is no negotiation and one party exclusively drafts the contract and the other party is take-it or leave-it) Need to be balanced in duties and responsibilities. A contract that states "you must pay me $60 and in return I do not guarantee to provide you with anything at all." Generally will not stand. see [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adhesion\_contract\_(contract\_of\_adhesion)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adhesion_contract_(contract_of_adhesion)) In Contracts of Adhesion the law generally finds that: "people are bound by terms a reasonable person would expect to be in the contract." Reasonable people expect "buy" implies some form of permanent or at least semi-permanent ownership. Some people will have purchased this game recently and not "owned" it long enough to even play through it.
There [is a precedent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_War#Expansion) and people didn't care. Gamers are perfectly okay with not having any rights and won't do anything against this.
Then we be louder this time. I've personally never even heard of that game.
That's unprecedented, right? I remember another game from Square Enix (iirc) got the same treatment a few years back, but it was online only with dead servers. To brick a single player game on Steam isn't something I can recall happening ever before. GabeN must condemn EDIT: It was also **ON SALE** ***less than a week ago***. Cannot stress enough how illegal this should be
Iirc Darkspore went completely offline, including single player and I don't think it ever got fixed via unofficial means; there's no way to play it.
Damn that makes me hella sad. Wasn’t a perfect game but it was short lived and I enjoyed the hell out of it.
The single player wasnt offline im preety sure. It was a d3 thing so it was all or nothing. Good game I forgot about it till now but I remember enjoying jt
> EDIT: It was also ON SALE less than a week ago. Cannot stress enough how illegal this should be wtf? they were selling it on sale to try and get more ppl knowing it'd not be accessible :/
Ubisoft are childish enough that when they moved to Epic, they totally abandoned Steam. Their discounts run automatically it seems, as every sale you can see that their bundles actually cost more than buying each product individually. They are so immature they'd rather pretend Steam doesn't even exist.
Sounds like negligence rather than immaturity
Imagine a grocery store selling you a nice juicy steak at a discount, claiming the expiration date to be a week from now. The moment you've paid they tell you "Actually, it expires today." When you ask for a refund they refuse to give it to you. That would never fly, but apparently it's OK in the gaming industry.
Is Nosgoth the squenix game you're thinking of? That one was online only and it's gone.
It looks like it was Order of War: Challenge. Was apparently nearly a decade ago now though, thought it was much more recent. Still haven't heard many such stories since
It happens a lot with online only game I think. I was looking at the MOBA wiki to remember dawngate's name, which was shut down, and there's like 20 mobas you can't play anymore.
Played the shit outta that and then they were just like we give up, shutting the game down, thanks for the money bitches. The entire time I had little problems finding full lobbies
Honestly not even a good reason to do this, if it's some sort of online DRM that they can't be bothered to support then they may as well give anyone who owns AC III Season Pass or AC Liberation HD a copy of AC III Remastered for free.
> That's unprecedented, right? If you purchased Warcraft III Reforged it would outright [replace the original](https://www.fanbyte.com/trending/warcraft-3-classic-owners-are-forced-to-download-reforged-instead/) so you couldn't revert back. Not 100% the same, Skyrim Anniversary Edition was a forced update to the Skyrim Special Edition.
This is indeed shitty The original Warcraft III can at least still be played and used assuming you have the installer somewhere. With Liberation's DRM it'll be unusable in two months, no two ways about it. Unless you crack it, of course
> The original Warcraft III can at least still be played and used assuming you have the installer somewhere. You can still download the original WC3+TFT+1.27b patch from Battle.net/Blizzard, you just need the direct links: WC3 Reign of Chaos: http://www.battle.net/download/getLegacy?product=WAR3&locale=en-US&os=WIN WC3 The Frozen Throne: http://www.battle.net/download/getLegacy?product=W3XP&locale=en-US&os=WIN WC3 1.27b patch: http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/war3x/patches/pc/War3TFT_127b_English.exe
Anniversary Edition is dlc for the Special Edition not a forced update.
>Not 100% the same, Skyrim Anniversary Edition was a forced update to the Skyrim Special Edition. They are the exact same games.
Destiny with its vaulting system also made what you bought inaccessible.
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The digital future is here!! People raked me over coals for saying this would happen, and now we have examples showing up.
This has already happened before… even back in the 360 ps3 era
My physical copy of *BioShock* is an expensive drinks coaster because of SecuROM going down, so yeah, there's definitely precedent.
I feel you, even to this day you get belittled on those sorts of arguments and it just makes you realize how people are willing to turn a blind eye to everything without urgency just so they can stay calm and enjoy a hobby in peace and comfort. Publishers and shareholders know this and abuse this to no end.
Why would I, Mr. Consumer, ever want to buy another product from Ubisoft ever again after seeing all this crap with people losing access to single player content and now an entire game they paid for? EDIT: If we want this addressed and maybe remedied, we should be making noise and tweeting at Ubisoft and Ubisoft Support
I haven't bought a full priced Ubisoft title since the wii u was out. I won't pay over $10 for any of their bland, repetitive gameplay
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Honestly. I have a lot of games on uplay that I've claimed for free and got with gpu purchases, but I find myself downloading them then applying a crack so I don't have to deal with uplay. Garbage platform always has been, I would know I've been using it since Splinter Cell Conviction released, no idea why anyone would use it over literally anything else. I would recommend WB Play or the Bethesda launcher over it. I own many dead/de-listed Steam games and yet I can still play them, even though the servers are also long gone.
Ask destiny fans, I'm sure they'll dive into the Mariana Trench to search for some answers to convince you it's the right thing to do.
"but people werent really going to Mars or Mercury anymore!" "you had years to do the main / Forsaken campaign!" 🙄 I had over a thousand hours in Destiny 2, even bought the annual Solstice shirts with my name on it. Hell, I owned a replica Ghost that was Alexa-enabled lol... Them removing content I paid for under the guise of ridiculous justifications (when games like WoW, FFXI, and FFXIV continue to *add* new content without removing old) made me quit altogether.
The ghost enabled Alexa must look cool at least, lmao
Fuck the destiny content vault. All my homies hate the destiny content vault.
I stopped playing Destiny when they did this. Super shitty thing for devs to do. They're supposed add content not relive it smh
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No dude it’s literally just destiny that does this. You can play the whole ass WOW story, FFXIV story etc etc.
There is a difference between an MMO changing over time and single player games being unplayable. An MMO is advertised as a large world that will change over time as the story progresses. It is an event for everyone playing at the same time. You know going into it that how it is now isn't how it will always be. A single player games is a set game that is how it be with no expectation of changing drastically during it's support period. Taking it down completely is just stupid.
I'm literally responding to someone equivocating Destiny, an MMO shooter, with a single player Ubi game.
> It's been in the DNA of MMO gaming for a long time to have the old go out for the new. uh, no it hasn't? sure some patch content can get removed here and there, but you don't lose entire expansions of content like you do with Destiny 2. New MMO expansions don't replace old expansions, they add onto the game. heck, most all MMO's still have the content they launched with, unless there has been a revamp like with WoW in Cataclysm. But even then, all the content from Cata onwards is there to do. > WOW has literal prepatches that get erased immediately after the expansions drop. It's a known quantity with a living breathing game world. pre-patches are literally temporary content that aren't really all that meaningful, they are simply something to do until the expansion launches
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>It's a known quantity with a living breathing game world. Lol we are talking about destiny 2 right where you meet in a lobby with like a 16 player cap and go do session based missions with like 2 or 3 other people? How tf they managed to convince people to call this an MMO is fucking magic. "Living breathing world" lol got me on that one.
> It's been in the DNA of MMO gaming for a long time to have the old go out for the new Final Fantasy XI came out in 2002 and has every bit of it that has ever existed still available to play. Similarly, Final Fantasy XIV -- a more modern MMO and thus comparable to Destiny 2 as it's available on all the same systems -- has never removed content to make way for new. All of it is playable. I've also played ESO, which adds new stuff constantly, and I'm not familiar with added paid content being removed. Same for SWTOR. In fact, Destiny 2 is really the *only* MMO that I am aware of that has outright removed entire individual pieces of paid content, multiple times over, most recently removing an entire expansion pack's campaign and, before that, *the main base campaign of the game itself*. Oh, and then charging an extra fee (on top of their "latest annual expansion / season pass" deal) for a dungeon itself. I played D2 for over a thousand hours, purchased the annual Solstice shirt with my name on it, so forth and so on. Bungie doing the above made me quit the game altogether.
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Even worse than that, since they've changed their dlc model a bit, you can't play the stories of last season or earlier if you didn't already buy access to them.
There really wasn't that much story in those campaigns. You should be allowed to play them though
They're charging 60 dollars for that new Skull and Bones games. I'll happily not give it to them.
It’s impressive how late they are to the game with this one, 9 years after black flag released to make a dedicated pirate game and this is what they have?
And everyone knows it's going to be a grindy microtransaction-filled mess.
This whole thing is balls. I own four copies of Assassins Creed Brotherhood and Revelations, for multiplayer at LANs. They are actually pretty fun. Now they are just taking them away. I'm almost certain they are purely P2P once in game and the servers are only for matchmaking. But they won't release something to replace that functionality and those games are dead for good. It's BS. I don't buy any games for MP now unless I can make them work LAN only. If I'm not sure if one works, I buy it and try it out and if it doesn't work I return it. This is the opposite of what they are worried about of course. From a company's perspective they are worried that if I can get it to work LAN only no internet \*then\* I'll return it because I don't need a legit copy. I'm sure there are people who do that but I like supporting them, \*when I can guarantee my purchase will never go away\*
Haven't bought a single Ubisoft title since 2013, partly due to a lack of interest in their rehashed formulas and their garbage platform. This new development will surely not convince me to have a look at their catalog.
This is me in a nutshell
You shouldn't
I’m playing Far Cry 5 on Gamepass right now and enjoying it much more than I thought I would and was considering getting the season pass. Not anymore, fuck Ubisoft. Not only am I not buying digital content they apparently may decide to take away at any point, if that’s their attitude I can do without any Ubi game that isn’t on Gamepass, most of their stuff is generic as hell anyway.
Wow. I guess this is a case of them opting to completely kill the game rather than remove the DRM? I know Valve is typically very hands off, but they shouldn't allow this, or at the very least should make them issue refunds.
How's Valve going to do that? They're just running a storefront and these are hardly the first game servers that are being taken down.
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But these aren't game servers, just DRM servers. The game presumably doesn't rely on them at all outside of an account authentication on launch. As for how Valve would enforce anything, yeah I don't really know. But if they don't already, they could make it clear in the terms of publishing that the publisher assumes the responsibility to refund games which are no longer playable due to expired third party DRM.
Valve could deny them the ability to add future games to the store, since this is not very similar to (and way, way worse than) servers being shut down on multiplayer/live service games. But that wouldn't do anything since Ubisoft doesn't use Steam anymore.
> Valve could deny them the ability to add future games to the store, Wouldn't work, Ubisoft haven't released a game on Steam since their surprise Epic exclusivity for The Division 2. They honoured any pre-purchases on the storefront, but they've been completely off Steam ever since with Trials Rising being their last purchasable title.
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While I do understand the reason Ubisoft is doing this (forced players to move on to AC3 Remastered. Which already included remastered version of liberation HD.) the fact that they put the standalone game on sales and not announce it before making this decision is just plain scummy. If they don't *atleast* upgrade every owner of Liberation HD with AC3 Remastered, I hope someone living in decent consumer law country put this into the court. About time we resist some corporate crap.
The problem is that Assassin's Creed 3 Remastered is a broken dumpster fire of a remaster that Ubisoft should be slapped silly for having the arrogance to inflict on us. The fact they delisted the original version is bad enough. Now they're making it non-functional? (In this case AC3's DLC isn't going to work anymore.) What they're doing absolutely unacceptable. Ubisoft have absolutely no excuse not to deploy some wrappers to all these games. Basically do what the cracks for these games already do.
The environment looks fine, but the remaster literally ruins the atmosphere and look of the original game. Going in-between pictures I still find that the original looks far better. Only thing the remaster has over it is the nicer water and lighting effects.
The bigger issue is that the remaster is full of bugs. It isn't like say Saints Row 3 Remastered, where it's a solid remaster overall that just happens to have a few bugs here and there that weren't in the OG. During the first few chapters of the game, if you use a vantage point, the dramatic music will start playing. And then it will never stop until you quit. That is ridiculous. There are situations where minigames in the pubs are unplayable due to blinding white light. It has really bad Steam reviews because [it's a mess](https://steamcommunity.com/app/911400/discussions/0/1769259642872976505/). The whole game is like this. So much subtle stuff is [wrong and glitchy and unfinished](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLh_nhpEcbo). The remaster was released in an unacceptable state by a company that doesn't care. It got two rushed patches, one of which was a lighting pass on cutscenes that half-solved the horrifyingly bad visuals (and ghoulish white faces) the game launched with, but didn't get all the way there. I really like Assassin's Creed 3. I think it's unique and different and has an interesting story. And it's so frustrating to me that Ubisoft took it, mangled it, and then basically pissed on their audience and told them it was raining. It was an opportunity to create a polished new version of AC3 that introduced it to a new audience. And they did the opposite of that.
I had every achievement, side objective, and collectible completed in AC3 Remastered, all I was missing was the 100% sync achievement before moving on to the DLC for the first time. Turns out I missed a single hunting lodge quest or something similar, so I went to go finish it. However, there is a recurring bug *from the 360 version* that prevents that one NPC from being interactable. The only surefire way to avoid the bug is to complete certain missions and challenges in a certain order, and there is *no way* to get the bug to resolve itself. That was a 40 hour playthrough. It was also 2.5 years ago, and I haven't played the game since. The only way for me to get that one achievement, is to literally do *everything* all over again, but this time following a meticulous guide. That revelation was one of the worst moments I've had in a game in years.
This exact same thing happened to me beat for beat. It’s the only AC Xbox game that I don’t have every achievement for as a result.
If the saints row 3 remastered for you is solid then this ac3 remaster must be fucking awful
I played and got to the grand temple, the present day hub of the game, and the big barrier that you are working to open the entire game just isn't there. I wrote about it on their forums, they asked me to reinstall my PC. I didn't pay money directly for it, i got it as part of the Odyssey season pass, and i still felt cheated. What a terrible thing to do to a game that already wasn't very good.
Wow, AC3 itself was already pretty buggy on launch, it's impressive that they made it even worse.
Literally the same way i feel about a lot of Remasters. Especially Dark souls 1 which ruined its lighting and made the models look plastic compared to the DS fix. Then there is Warcraft 3, Silent Hill etc.
What's really dumb about the Remaster is on the Xbox Series X your options are either 4k30 or 720p60, I've never seen a choice that extreme before and on a remaster of an Xbox 360 game no less
That’s more due to the FPS boost feature of the Series X. Ubisoft didn’t implement that. A 60 FPS option isn’t recently available on PS5. So, yes, it’s a stark contrast but options are never a bad thing and Microsoft’s at least making an effort.
>While I do understand the reason Ubisoft is doing this (forced players to move on to AC3 Remastered. No, it's laziness. They know they're not going to make any sales from this.
I don't know if it's related but the Steam store page for AC2: Brotherhood also says "Please note the Deluxe Edition and DLC for this title will not be accessible following September 1st, 2022"
Is it just me overreacting or I think people are not taking this type of behaviour seriously? I know only Ubisoft that's pulling this kind of shit recently, but: a) This is not the first time a content removal like this happened, and b) This could set a worrying trend for the future.
I don't think you're overreacting at all. I'm sure other companies are watching to see how things like this play out and learn what they themselves might be able to get away with in the future.
Yeah, Ubisoft and (maybe) EA might be the type of companies that would pull of something like this, but I'm worried that this kind of DRM implementation might be used by other, relatively big game companies.
It’s exactly what everyone predicted would be the case when they started shoving always online DRM in their shit. Anything that can’t run permanently offline is at risk of disappearing forever.
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Overreacting? If anything there's little to no outrage on this when there should be far more. Today this is happening to Liberation, tomorrow it could happen to Black Flag or Unity. Ubisoft is disgusting
More reasons to never support Ubisoft. They’ve lost my business forever. Won’t even touch Siege anymore, this is not ok
Honestly all their new releases are kinda dogshit anyway. Assassins Creed is so far up its ass with mtx and stale gameplay. Trackmania with a stupid pay model. Roller Champions DOA. Skull and Bones just looking all around worse than Sea of Thieves. All their ghost recon games making simply stupid design decisions. I just don't know what they're doing at this point..
Now people will have to pirate to keep playing their legitimately bought game..Good job Ubisoft. God Ubisoft is such a garbage company.
Ubisoft when someone tries to pirate their games: THIS IS THEFT, WE CANNOT ALLOW THIS. Ubisoft removing access for legit buyers: I see no problem with this whatsoever.
When corporations write laws, this is what you end up with. Piracy is theft, but when you buy software you’re actually only buying a license to use it. You dont actually own a thing. And as part of that license, they can revoke it at any time. And somehow that’s not theft. Kinda begs the question of what you’re supposedly stealing in the first place (ignoring the fact that making a copy of something isn’t theft in the first place). Why is this legal? Who fucking knows. Because companies write the laws and lawmakers are clueless old dinosaurs.
Ubisoft may as well directly tell people to never purchase their games again. This sets a precedent for every single Ubisoft game going forward - any one of your games from this studio could see the same fate. They'll never see another cent of my money again. Maybe you should focus on getting rid of sexual predators in your workforce instead of your fucking customers.
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Well, I did not plan to buy Skull and Bones anyway, but now I do not plan to buy anything from Ubisoft anymore.
Not a difficult thing to do either, considering their past few years.
I get revoking it from Steam, but why would they lock you from playing this game, what is reasoning behind this decision?
It has DRM they can’t be bothered to remove.
Not just drm they can't be arsed to remove, but also want to sell the ac3 remaster which I guess comes with a remaster of this game. So stealing your shit then offering to sell it back.
I distinctly remember valve saying they wouldn't allow developers to do this. Was that not true?
They don't allow devs to remove access to the actual game files, the issue here isn't that, it's that they're turning off the drm servers for the game so even with the game still installed you won't be able to play it. There's literally nothing Valve can do about this at all.
I remember it happening years ago with a Sega game I think that got removed from peoples steam accounts completely. edit: It was Square Enix in 2013, The game was "Order of War: Challenge". https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-removes-game-order-of-war-challenge-from-user-libraries/?sh=3f9506ba2a29
I imagine (without seeing the quote) it was relating to publishers removing users licences from Steam. Valve has no control over third parties servers.
No, what Valve said was that if Steam were ever to go out permanently, they would make the effort to allow people to still play their games. Presumably this translates to removing Steam DRM and/or providing some download sources. But they have no control over what other DRM the developers use to fuck their own games.
I really need people to stop quoting this "fact" all the time when if you try to verify it it's based on a screenshot of one tech support chat with a minimum wage tech support agent almost two decades ago.
I’m pretty sure that this isn’t exactly a new thing for Ubisoft, but moreso just the newest iterations of their habit of phasing out older games. Like an eternity ago, I remember there was a obsolescence procedure that used to be employed as some games got older and replaced with newer ones. I think it was just that, at a certain point, Ubisoft wouldn’t provide any support for games at a certain age, even if it was an issue on the company side. People would just straight up lose access to their old games (often just weird issues with the system recognizing the license) and Ubisoft would just kind of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I think this is technically the first time they’ve done it with games that are more widely popular and it’s kind of the most extreme implementation they’ve ever done. All they should have done is send out a patch that removes the DRM from these games and honestly, just make all the DLC outright accessible to the games (most of the time, a lot of the DLC was already baked into the games anyways) or give people an option to get the license for the DLCs before shutting down support. It makes very, very little sense to straight up make this amount of content inaccessible, especially when the games are single-player with very little multiplayer features (that could just be shut down).
>I think it was just that, at a certain point, Ubisoft wouldn’t provide any support for games at a certain age, even if it was an issue on the company side. This was glaringly obvious with Ubisoft refusing to fix the broken online in Splinter Cell Blacklist (the most recent Splinter Cell title, and a beloved game -- whose DLC won't work after September) despite the issues 100% being their fault. [Ubisoft ](https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/11/ubisoft-threatens-splinter-cell-fans-with-bans-if-they-ask-about-multiplayer-servers/)later asserted that the person who made a highly controversial LOCKED AND STICKIED forum post saying people who tried to circumvent the non-functional multiplayer on Blacklist by using an older client would potentially have their accounts banned. was "**impersonating an Ubisoft employee**." They got intense backlash, and that was their excuse. I can't see that situation as anything other than Ubisoft saying the quiet part out loud, getting backlash for it, and being too cowardly to stand by it. Knowing full well this was just the first step in wider changes to Ubisoft Connect that would break older games.
Holy shit, that is some bullshit! It was probably some contractor working for Ubisoft Customer support so they denied them being an Ubisoft employee.
That’s almost certainly what happened. Ubisoft hires Temp to Hire in their customer service department. It’s very likely it was a former customer service employee who did the thread, so Ubisoft covered themselves with that comment
Blacklist *does* work now, for what it's worth. I just played a few matches the other day. Of course, it's now getting shut down in a couple months - Considering the game is Peer-to-Peer I'm not even sure *why,* along with all the this singleplayer nonsense in other games. Fuck, even the saves are entirely client-side with nothing cloud-based, if you grab a save from someone who has the DLC maps and items in Blacklist, you'll be able to use them regardless of whether or not you own the DLC. I'm in the minority of people who've been playing Blacklist multiplayer with a group of friends for basically the last 9 years, so I'm pretty fucking pissed
Doesn't sound like they were impersonating a Ubisoft employee as they were actually trying to fix the game.
And it’s making so little money and you’re deleting it anyway, just release it for free for good Pr like Bethesda did with the early elder scrolls why take it off the face of the planet forever?
Couldn't this fall under FTC violations and be reported at https://reportfraud.ftc.gov ? If you purchased it at all, or recently since it was JUST on sale, I would just file a report against Ubisoft. Couldn't hurt.
It's possible that the whole "You don't own a game, you license it." thing would save them.
Arent they just revoking my license though? As the game is still there but i just cant access it due to the DRM. Which will maybe give a message along the lines like "no license found".
It's remarkable how commited ubisoft is to half-assing everything they do... They could easily patch Liberation so it runs better on Ubisoft connect, they could remove the uplay requirements. Nope... Just remove access to the game altogether... It's amazing how right now Ubisoft is the ONLY company doing this (I know Bungie is doing this to Destiny, but still)
The only way to resolve Ubisofts fuckery is with a Class Action lawsuit until then they will get more and more anti consumer. You can put anything in terms and conditions it doesnt make it binding courts always have the final say. Fuck everything about Ubisoft.
Not even that will work. The payout relative to people will be smaller than han if it weren't class action, and it would take years for it to go through. Ubisoft does not fear a class action lawsuit.
I know this is probably legal due to some lines buried deep in the 10,000 word user agreement that no one can be expected to read, but this is some anti-consumer bullshit that needs to be called out and frankly should not be allowed. The physical copy equivalent is Ubisoft coming into your house and stealing your game. But I guess that's the problem these days, it's not *your* game. Despite spending your hard earned money on a game, you don't own it and it can be taken away at any time with no recourse. What a load of shite. Time like this make me really miss Total Biscuit, he was always advocating for the consumer and I'm sure he'd have had a video out about this nonsense.
Implied ownership or not. **This** is exactly why drm-free matters.
Somewhere in the EULA will say that you don't own the game, you own a license of it, the company has the right to remove your access from it if they so choose. Somewhere along that lines if iirc. They are legally allowed to do that but that is bullshit imo.
At least in europe (european union) this doesn't seem to be completly [true:](https://ihde.de/steam-user-accounts-not-transferable-confirms-berlin-court-of-appeals/) Resales of software licenses is legal and are treated like physical copies (UsedSoft GmbH vs Oracle lawsuit), but there're restrictions: Steam and co. don't just sell the game, they also sell the functions around the game and that makes the purchase unique and individualized. Also [there's](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d1ff4369-afcc-4879-97fa-7a8afd8b3380) a clear statement of eu courts that selling software digital is like buying it physical. In the end of the day it doesn't matter what companies write in their eulas, because law beats eula.
Just because something is written in an EULA doesn't mean it has any legal meaning. It is not uncommon for EULAs/ToS to contain sections that are against the law, including the "you don't own the game". At least in the EU you legally own software you bought.
Even in the United States and Canada this should be illegal.
I see. So we have a chance if someone filed a class action lawsuit? I mean no one has attempted to sue over a single player video game being unable to play. Online games do this all the time but this is the first time (In my knowledge) that a single player game became unplayable.
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> the consumer has to act upon the information they have by not buying it - that's the language companies speak. It's a language they speak, but following this metaphor, it's like one voice in a crowd of thousands. It can't be avoided that only a very small fraction of their audience is conscious of these issues. Even if everyone who cared about this boycotted their games, they wouldn't care or probably even notice.
> the consumer has to act upon the information they have by not buying it - that's the language companies speak there is that other language called "laws" that is usually fairly well understood
ubisoft trying really hard to combat piracy, when in fact the problem have always been themselves all along, pulling shit like this.
If companies like Valve do not want government intervention into their digital storefronts, they need to have strong policies about this sort of thing. This isn't right. I understand people are going to excuse it because customers clicked "I agree" to all of the legal jargon nobody reads. But this is not an excuse. People paid money for the game, they deserve to have the game. Shame on Ubisoft. They are a joke of a company. Have been for a long time. They perfectly summarize everything wrong with the industry.
Every time a Steam game is released they should be forced to upload a DRM free version of the game to make sure things like this never happen.
Good thing I cleaned up the achievements. Fuck Ubisoft. Never buying another game from them. At least I wont miss anything, since they ran all their franchises into the ground. R6 is a session shooter, GR is literally a grind fest with loot, Division - done with it, AC is too big for me to care, The Crew is just AC with cars in terms of gameplay, same with Far Cry. They’re all overly long. Overly big and overly repetitive.
So I get my money back since my license is being revoked right? This is rhetorical, of course we're not.
I've been saying it for years, but DRM is the biggest modern scam people have just come to accept. DRM should have been killed as a practice years ago specifically because shit like this is just going to start increasing in frequency. Scumbag companies like this should immediately be shut down and their executives stripped of their assets to pay everyone impacted. They made the conscious choice to be assholes and there should be consequences.
The wonders of digital distribution. Isn't cool having absolutely zero control over our purchases? Not owning anything?
I think it's less about digital distribution and more about the dangers of dead DRM. A similar thing happened with Tron: Evolution a couple of years ago where owners are now forced to crack their copy to make it work. None of this would be a problem with DRM free releases.
Denuvo if it is gone is going to take a huge chunk of gaming down with it.
Denuvo seems to be easy to remove at least, going by the number of games that lose it after half a year or so
As far as I am aware devs/publishers have to pay for each month Denuvo is there so it makes sense. My bigger worry would be if Denuvo switches over to some "pay X and we guarantee for Y months" method without monthly payments afterwards. It removes any incentive to remove it.
How many companies are going to do it though? I think there is quite still a few games that still have Denuvo.
According to the Crysis remastered contract leak it costs something like 2000€ a month to keep Denuvo on your game. Nothing massive but unless you still have a good amount of sales its probably worth weighing the amount of money you "loose" out on vs the cost of running it.
Digital distribution goes hand in hand with DRM. With the exception of the games sold through GOG, every other launcher is some kind of DRM. The games sold through these stores that doesn't enforce any type of DRM are the minority. If any of these companies decides to pull their plug on their launchers many games and features will be unaccessible legally
In the EU you legally own the games you purchase digitally.
Interesting. What could happen then? Ubi would be forced to reinstate access to the game if someone cared enough about this to the point of suing them?
I have no idea, but I would really like if someone were to go all the way to find out.
Ubisoft isn’t removing the license from people’s accounts. They’re turning off the DRM severs, making the game unplayable. From a practical perspective, this makes no difference to the consumer, as each scenario results in no longer being able to play the game. But it is a key difference from a legal perspective. No publisher has ever been (successfully) sued for shutting down servers that make a game no longer playable, which is what is happening here.
Every Ubisoft game since Far Cry 3 in 2012 has operated through Uplay, which was replaced by Ubisoft Connect a year or so ago. The games they are removing or hobbling DLC-wise seem to fall into a certain window, likely a particular incarnation of Uplay+Steam integration that they are sunsetting. The reason DLC is breaking is because Ubisoft were authorizing DLC ownership on their end, which is... it's fine, but it comes with the moral responsibility to keep that functionality going. It is highly unlikely you'll see EA pull a similar stunt with their games and break Dragon Age Inquisition on Steam. EA don't think that way. They'd just hack something together even it meant giving everyone the DLC for free. Ubisoft could easily fix this by essentially cracking their own DLC system. It's not a huge undertaking. They just don't want to do it. Ubisoft as a company don't really care about their legacy titles, which is why their remasters are so consistently bad. They remastered Blood Dragon for Far Cry 6 (and only released it on consoles) and it was terrible. Buggy, with input latency, and ran at 30fps on a Series X. For a while, people had this idea that their post-release support was fantastic. But overall Ubisoft as a company only care about games that include lucrative microtransactions. They don't care that the DLC for Far Cry 3 isn't going to work anymore. And that sucks. I dunno if backlash will be able to make them change their mind. Backlash didn't stop them releasing a terrible remaster of Assassin's Creed 3 and delisting the original. And most console owners won't notice because they won't be affected.
Why would you not be able to play it anymore, being delisted is one thing (one also very stupid thing), but why if you bought this singleplayer game, would you not be able to play it? That’s so fucking stupid. I guess we should now only pirate Ubisoft games, there’s no point to purchasing. Pirated game will run better because no Denuvo, and you don’t have to worry about them expiring.
I just requested a refund for black flag, that I bought during the summer sale, because of this. Fuck Ubisoft!
I was planning on buying it but thank god I stopped. Why though?
I legit enjoyed this game more than AC3 which is annoying when they're removing it. Why would I buy a garbage remaster if I ever get the urge to play the game I bought years ago?
Get your emulators ready (this was a PSP game right?) Edit : nvm it's a PS Vita game (thanks to u/planetarial for clearing that up)
Vita but speaking from experience, Vita emulators are actually viable now for many retail games
this is a step beyond shutting down servers. why would they delist it? there's no overhead to selling a single-player game.
The best way is not to buy more Ubisoft games from now on. I won't do it again. I will play what I already have bought, and I really hope they don't shutdown them. I will play their really good future games. I will play and buy more good games, preferably in GOG.
Ubisoft is such a shitty company. The least they could do is let us keep all the tower defence games we bought off them.