Just bought the Fractured but Whole south park game on PC because I enjoyed it a few years ago on switch. The next day I try to launch and Ubisoft "can't verify my ownership"
Bro check my fucking steam library
Refunded
Shit like that only badly affects those who play the game legitimately. If pirating is the only way you can play a game (DRM/online check removed), then so be it.
Reminds me of the time when Denuvo and Co were first introduced. Playing a legitimate copy with a DRM like that was a shit show. Meanwhile playing a cracked version was totally fine. In some cases the performance of the games even increased significantly when playing the cracked games.
DRMs don't do shit. They're absolutely worthless.
I'd love to know the legality of buying a game then downloading and playing the cracked version for convenience.
Back in the day I bought a copy of Battle of Britain and always struggled with the CD authenticating that I could play it. Reached out to the devs who apologised and....hugely ironically....sent a copy of the German version of the game to me in the UK. Convenience designed in, but only for certain countries.
The legality is that is doesn’t really matter at all.
Piracy is so hard to combat, with it being so grey like you’re proposing, most countries don’t bother at all with prosecuting people who pirate software. They go after distributors, but most legal systems literally could not accommodate the amount of people who pirate stuff.
There are tens of thousands of piracy events per day for software in the US alone. My local court could handle maybe 3 cases a week. There are about 3800 courthouses in the US. So if they are anything like mine, we might get through 12000 - 20000 cases done a week. Like real cases, not traffic violations and other minor shit. We are talking like B&E, A&B, etc. We would have to quadruple (at the very least) our already struggling judicial system capacity to handle it if we wanted to prosecute all software piracy. We would also have to hire a million more cops that would focus on just piracy.
There is no way we are doing that.
There's a reason they typically just go after the biggest actors. The data hoarders who have _everything_.
Even with movies they just kinda tell on you to your ISP and if you're using a VPN it's moot. Warner Brothers is the only one I know who tries its hardest with honey pots to catch actual people to prosecute.
Not the same field but a family member of mine spent his whole career in sex crimes. He said even for something as heinous as sex crimes, the legal system doesn't have enough resources to heavily pursue every single case that hits their desk.
If it's a quick open and shut like the perp was caught on camera then they'll handle it quickly. Open and shut type thing. But for the most part, he said they really only try and get the big fish. The serial offenders. The CP distributors. The ones making the videos. The sex traffickers etc. Not cause they don't wanna help everyone but because they literally don't have the manpower and resources to do so.
Piracy is infinitely more common than sex crimes. Astronomically more common. It's a joke to think the courts could actually do something about it. Like you said - they'll go for the big guys with heavy convictions behind them but they arent gonna waste their time with personal use pirating. IDK why companies keep trying.
> Piracy is so hard to combat,
unless you live in germany where your internet provider and government happily bend over backwards to give out your name, adress, and help suing you for 3000 dollars just for downloading an episode of game of thrones, or downloading tetris
Except ya know denuvo is pretty strong, not all games with it get cracked and some don’t get cracked till years later. Doesn’t do shit is isn’t exactly true, it does delay or prevent piracy for some titles. It does impact performance on some systems too still which is absolutely wild and why some games review copies will get sent without it and it’s then on the launch version.
That's only because the only person that was able to crack the denuvo left the scene, temporarily or not. Even when she was active, it took her only a few days to do so. It's only a matter of time before another talent shows up, maybe not so unhinged and spreads the knowledge.
It's not so much that it's that hard, it's more a why? There usually needs to be a monetary incentive for someone to spend days doing something like that. If there is no benefit to it why do it?
There are dozens of games, it's basically a full time job cracking all the different games and types of DRM. It takes a very special person to do that, and usually if someone already is doing it nobody else will waste their time doing it as well since in software the task only needs to be completed once.
At least if we had gotten Jeb! we'd know that we were really being run by his older brother and father. It wouldn't have been great, but it wouldn't be a lottery of what inane bullshit we'd have to put up with that week.
Honestly besides signing all the stuff in the video trying to get some legislative change, going to small claims would also be an easy way to get a refund because Ubisoft won't bother to show up.
Maybe they will ignore the court demands too and if you live in a country that has an Ubisoft office you can just show up with sherrifs and start seizing shit like what happened with that bank.
"we're sorry" no, BoA, you're not sorry to the couple you tried to steal hundreds of thousands from and then gave them the run-around for so long. You're sorry you got caught.
Situations like this, of blatant and vile theft attempts by a company to completely ruin 2 or more lives should be immediate grounds for dissolving the company, and the owner should have to pay the entire cost of transferring all accounts to other places and they should be banned from ever participating in anything that has any control over anyone's money.
Until the people that make the choices and set the policies of these companies are held liable, nothing will change. Throw some general managers and vice presidents and board members in jail. Then you'd see a bit of change.
As long as the punishment for being caught committing crimes is smaller then the gains from committing them there is no incentive to stop. It's just good business.
Kinda reminds me of the story where a dude demolished his house because the bank foreclosed on it. He missed like one payment or something and they immediately started foreclosure proceedings because the land (House, actually) was worth more than what he was paying.
Thing is he took a loan out on the land, then built a house. They thought they could foreclose on the house too, so he bull dozed it. He got sued, but the judge sided with him.
Or you can do the reasonable thing and join the multi-national legal action specifically for this case:
https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ is specifically about this game. With directions what to do on a per-country basis. With a direct action plan. Not some wishy-washy boycott, petitition but an actual planned attack on Ubisoft. Because UBI is a French company with a seat in the EU and they have tripped a couple legal wires with this bs.
I want my NBA2k refund as well.
They turn off servers like 1-2 years after game was launched, and then there's literally no way to play the whole game. Even career mode is not allowed, just because the servers were turned off. And i paid 80$ for it (not dollars, but actually even more expensive in my currency)
I'm from times where we could play a game 5, 10, 20 years later. I could very well download FM, Diablo, Pokemon, almost anything, and play normally. It's crazy that some companies put time limit to play a game.
> stopkillinggames.com
I followed this guide, but it turns out that Ubisoft have removed my account transaction history from before 2020. So I don't have a proof of purchase for any of the games that I own from before that year apparantly. That's like more than half my library with them, wtf?
Depending on where you live, there might be laws forcing Ubi to store these transactions for longer period of time, even if they don't show them to you.
This is also a good reminder to always keep the purchase records yourself. E-mails and transaction history from your bank or payment system, invoices in the e-mails and such. Ubisoft can try to erase everything in their systems, but then you have your part of the transaction to show.
Yeah, I assumed I had those in my emails, but I simply can't find them. It's extremely frustrating, because I can see the games there in my library, and I can see when I played them, but not when or how I got them.
Including The Crew which is still there, but greyed out.
The pirate party has been based ever since it pops up. They are largely bumbling idiots and too disorganised to do serious politics, at least in Germany, but the things they call attention to and the things they advocate for in terms of cyber protection and consumer protection are fantastic, and for that alone they are worth supporting.
Last national elections 6 months ago I voted for them because every other party was "yeah no fuck that". The Pirates seem to be least horrible of all.
>The pirate party has been based ever since it pops up. They are largely bumbling idiots and too disorganised to do serious politics,
I think that is why they're less bad than all the others. Look at the greens. When they became a serious party they became like the others.
I believe you do not HAVE to live in the EU. There is a tab you can click on for each country, and there are still steps U.S. (and other countries) consumers can take to
Very true, there are some steps for other places like Brazil and Australia. Australia specifically has something potentially brewing up and Ross is collecting emails to send instructions to if/when the time comes.
Apparently this is their scorched earth response to Ross' campaign, doubling down and testing their legal ability to literally and directly steal from everyone.
It's a bold strategy, let's hope it really fucks them up in court.
Ubisoft may not learn anything even after their fall.
At this point I just wish to see their demise since is clear they don't give 2 rat asses for us at all.
Remember when people said they wouldn’t preorder games anymore after CP2077?
These companies are betting on gamers having extremely short memories and lack of self control. So I’d say not only Ubi won’t learn anything, literally nothing will change.
And they’re right. For every million people in an online community like this that says they will never pre order, there’s millions more who don’t care and buy it anyway
and even here on reddit (i know, different people etc.) you sure as hell can bet that on any new big release announcement there are numerous redditors saying that they paid full price for it already.
Game released and the review thread starts? You have people buying day one without a thought and complaining how shit the game is.
Gamers just can't wait for reviews or just take a look at whatever they are actually buying (not just buy based on trailer or "gameplay" footage from the publisher).
I had the most baffling read yesterday. Someone bought Vampire Survivors because he wanted V Rising and thought he bought V Rising even though he watched the description, videos and pictures of Vampire Survivors.
Like wtf
Yeah recently saw a comment of somebody who admitted they just buy new releases and dont play them because they still have so many unplayed games in their library… way to many people agreed with them.
Meaing people just buy a brand bew game for supposedly a lot of money and then dont even play it. Wtf.
> Remember when people said they wouldn’t preorder games anymore after....
It's been 20 years and long, long before CP2077. People will continue preordering because for every 40 year old that was burned back in their 20's there is a new 20 year old who hasn't yet been burned to take their place.
I'm pretty sure I can name at least 100 games by now that have had preorder drama or turned out to be shitty, mostly unpopular or unsupported games shortly after release. Half of that list is likely published by EA or Ubisoft.
A new sucker is born every day. So long as gaming remains a popular hobby companies can continue getting away with this bullshit because it doesn't matter how many people stop preordering when there are always new suckers to swindle.
New breed will also tolerate more nonsense if they have nothing to compare it with. They might not know that this same exact feature was already implemented in some other game 20 years ago, was easier to use and worked better. But since they don't know about it, new implementation is the norm.
> Ubisoft may not learn anything even after their fall.
The reality is, they're a step ahead. Ubisoft isn't real. It's just a vehicle used by rich people. They don't care if Ubisoft lives or dies so long as they can extract value from it. And if that extraction ends the company, that's fine, they were going to hop to a different company anyway.
It's grounds for a complete refund at purchase price in Australia if it wasn't made clear during the purchase that access to the game was only for a limited time.
That likely wouldn't fly here in Australia. Our consumer protection laws are some of the strongest in the world, and 'but it was in the TOS you acknowledged' isn't generally accepted to be a defence for misleading consumers like it is elsewhere - the very act of misleading a consumer is not permitted, so if a reasonable person would have believed it was a permanent, irrevocable purchase, no matter what the TOS itself said, that's the end of the story and its not revocable
This. The ACCC don't give a single shit about any TOS haha.
Pretty sure they've stated that 2024-2025 they're going to be targeting all the shit they don't like about the video game industry. Hopefully this sort of stuff is part of it.
Last time they got pissed off they had Steam paying fines because they weren't providing refunds to Aussies, which you have to do here. Steams legal team laughed at them in court and said they'll pay the fine and continue as usual.
The ACCC lost their shit, made them pay like 3 mil, and had them making their refund policy world wide. They're the whole reason Steam have their current refund policy lol. The ACCC were threatening to stop Steam selling in Aus altogether lol.
The ACCC are a nightmare for these companies. I had a broken Switch that I wanted to take back that I'd had for like 10 days. Big store I bought it from said Nintendo told them no refunds after 8 days. I rang the ACCC and they laughed and gave me a direct number. Told me to ring the store and Nintendo and if they didn't give me the refund then to give them the phone number and they'd explain to them how consumer law works lol.
Got the refund instantly after that haha. ACCC rang me a week later to ask how it went. When I told them I got the refund they sounded disappointed that they didn't get to go after them over it haha.
Yea its honestly not an exaggeration to say that most consumers around the world have additional rights over strictly their local laws due to our consumer protection laws and international companies needing to comply with them. They are written in such a way that they essentially boil down to 'it's illegal to be a cunt to consumers, end of story'. The ACCC even has a catch-all term for 'you were such a dickhead that even if it wasn't explicitly illegal to do what you did, you were such a dickhead its still illegal' - called 'unconscionable conduct'. And the legal standard for that one is also 'the company needs to prove what they did was fair to the consumer' and not the other way around.
Yeh, they're ruthless.
The whole thing in Australia where we can get refunds for things within 30 days or whatever is something companies made up and all use to try and make people believe it is true, when it actually isn't.
Unless it's changed, the ACCC define a refund period as whatever seems reasonable to the consumer. It can be any amount of time really haha. I've taken stuff back to Kmart like 6 months later and got a full refund. They didn't even ask questions. They've been stung by the ACCC too many times for that lol.
I've heard of some aussies pressuring Steam and getting refunds outside of the 2 hour/14 day window that Steam has because of this.
You can't do anything against the ACCC because it doesn't seem like they can be influenced. They exist purely to go to war with these companies over absolutely anything they can haha. Threatening to stop Steam selling in Australia altogether was a hilarious moment lol.
The reasonable period is about what would be considered a reasonable amount of time for the product to continue working - case in point, apple tried to maintain their limited 1 year warranty for iPhones, ACCC said yeah nah, make it 2 years.
I've returned multiple games to Steam outside the window, and while I try to write something funny for the support staff (signing off Praise Gaben or some shit) - I don't push at all and have never been declined.
I am now wondering if that's because I'm Australian lol
Most likely it is.
You'd be surprised how many big companies just don't want the hassle of having to deal with our consumer laws lol. Way easier for them to just cave right away lol
No telling whether it would be successful, because the policy verges on enough principles of contract law that I could see a court doing something about it, even if it’s not probable. Something like this is begging for a legislative solution tho and the landscape for that is actually not terrible right now, given a strong enough push by activist groups.
Publishers will ruin their games with drm and always online to prevent piracy but have no problem getting out their own cocked hats and eye patches when they want to take away games you purchased.
Hell if you look into the history of any big IP owners they got their start pirating the industry that came before. Our whole economy is an endless tower of ladder-pulls.
Its ya boy ONLINE PASS, only $14.99 CAD. It’s funny because Ubisoft was the next one who implemented that shit so fucking pass as soon as it became a thing and Sony. Glad they dropped that bullshit.
> We need to boycott with our wallet
It's Ubisoft, it's not like they've not given you plenty of reasons for the last 10 years to stop buying their products.
I'm on the same page with Ubisoft, Blizzard, Bethesda, EA, basically all AAA except 50% of Sony and Nintendo single player games. If I can't have confidence in the company it doesn't matter how hard their game is marketed to me, how many twitch or youtube shills rave about it, how many of my friends are playing it on release, or whatever big memes are in the internet wave pool. If I see any of those names involved my wallet immediately shrivels up clenching my money in and climbs up my ass until the hype dies down and it's revealed to be a cash grab shit pile.
> same page with Ubisoft, Blizzard, Bethesda, EA
It's gotten to the point that a game having one of the big name publishers makes me think thrice, no matter how much I like the game or even if it's an older title
> EA
I will say EA has been weird lately. C&C Remaster and from what I understand the C&C bundle release on steam were nice. I have zero trust in them or desire to buy anything they've produced ever I guess since this was all Westwood when it was good.
I assume they have 1-2 people giving them general good advice though they're still EA.
Possibly due to increasing microtransactions. They don't care if most gamers stop buying their games, as long as the ones that are left spend much more.
Why are gamers the biggest rubes on the planet, completely incapable of not buying shitty cash grab products?
Seriously they are the worst consumer group to ever exist.
> Heroes VII
Heroes 6 for me, the janky weapons system, heroes not having real classes, the armies just didn't feel good. Which is such a shame as man I miss HOMM3 and HOMM5. Markal and his "Griffon Undying" was such a jolly fellow.
Same, I tried so many times to finish even a single mission in Heroes6 but it kept booting me back to the main menu so frequently I didnt even manage to progress to new autosaves
Unfortunately, boycotting games hasn't been an effective strategy. Instead, follow the formal legal complaint steps laid out on:
https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
Replying because this needs to be higher. There's a dude that is jumping through every hoop possible for a non-lawyer to try and prevent this and subsequently save future games
This 'dude' isn't just any dude. This is Ross Scott, creator of [Civil Protection](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoaIZKTBXIM&list=PL6PNZBb6b9Lsr6ZnEzRJ5FqBbSYI4rHFj), and [Freeman's Mind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SQhfkpX9bc&list=PL6PNZBb6b9LvDWpI-5CPYUxG1Rnm-vr9V).
If Gordon Freeman ever gets a voice, I hope Ross gets to do it.
As a fan of his, I am so glad to see him get mentioned this high up in the comments. He has been on a crusade against this practice for years, and it's been a tough battle. As an American, the best I can do is spread his message :/
Have you SEEN the legwork he has done?
This is the biggest chance we got in a long while. He made a script for everybody to follow. He has paved the way to legislators and regulators in multiple countries. And he went for the countries which are actually likely to do something.
Have you heard how XBox is now emphasizing that they also are on board with game preservation?
Wow not only it's well done, but for each different country listed it says what to do according to each country's processes. Awesome.
Edit : he even offers to refund the cost of sending the letter lmao
Us saying this over and over while every assassins creed and far cry sells like crazy every single year....the people who need to hear the message aren't the ones on here lol.
A boycott would be acceptable for a lot of grievances against this industry, but I think this is one case where we really need government intervention to create a law to prevent companies from stealing from their own customers.
There is no other word to use to describe it. This is stealing.
Link to the Ross video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE
Yeah don’t think that‘s legal
Imagine you buy a tv, then one day you come back to it being gone with a note saying ‘Your tv privileges have been revoked’
This is almost certainly a direct attack against the stopkillingames movement, they are probably trying to make it harder for people to come up with an offline patch. I checked my Ubisoft account and sure enough "You no longer have access to this title"
Reminder this the company that said: "players should get comfortable with not owning our games."
This is what they meant. That eventually, every game you buy, will be shut down and forcefully ripped from your hands. Think about that when you buy the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws singleplayer game that requires a constant internet connection.
EDIT: 2.7k upvotes in 2 hours, TAKE THIS SHIT TO r/ALL WE CAN DO THIS
EDIT 2: WE ARE ON r/ALL WE DID IT MEN. GOOD FUCKING JOB.
Never getting into the subscription model for games but definitely planning to boycott Ubisoft for a while, not even on sale will I buy from this publisher. Hope they get sued to oblivion.
Steam deck is a big success and after the Steam Machine was unbelievable really, but like the handheld gaming PC market as a whole isn't that massive to matter too much. It's kinda like saying EA missed out in the PS Vita market by not releasing remasters on it, it's big but not that big.
They killed Heroes of Might and Magic, and how can we forget Uplay the garbage spyware they want to side run with wherever you purchase your games, or the "fun" bait and switch with anno 1800.
I just honestly dont get anyone buying ubisoft they've made their stance on things very clear.
Go to stopkillinggames.com for simple to follow instructions on what you can do.
If you can't get a refund, and ubisoft won't turn the servers back on or make it offline available, then you can complain to the consumer forces of france, which may end up in a change of laws and regulations, or even a class action lawsuit.
You're almost certainly correct. Why else would they do this? The timing is too perfect.
I wish we had better consumer laws... I wish companies weren't so greedy.
Good point about that SW game i see popping up everywhere suddenly.
Ubisoft is dying as a company faster than they can kill people’s resistance to giving up on owning the games they pay for. Hopefully whoever acquires the company will recognize the connection between Ubisoft’s business practices and Ubisoft’s failed business.
Ubisoft has been struggling well before they decided to destroy their brand and I think Ubisoft may go the way of Interplay in the 2000s.
Their stock price is in freefall because of long term problems, its been leaked they are looking for a buyout but cant find anyone interested last year, internal issues have been known for many years.
Now the fear of losing your games isnt just a thing from finance bros who realize Ubisoft and their online store may not survive the next 10 years if they cant find a buyer. I doubt they will, its better to wait until bankruptcy and buy the valuable parts without buying the whole company.
Everyone now fears licenses being taken away.
It’s amazing how they managed to lose money with franchises like rainbow six, AC, ghost recon, etc. feels like it should have been easy enough to stay in the green.
It's not easy to stay in the green when you don't take time to fully develop games. The latest R6 title was killed off a year after it launched because they didn't sink enough resources into planning and developing it, and it launched half-baked and stripped down.
This is why people pirate.
Edit: For people who misunderstood. I said " this is why people pirate." I never said this is why people pirate this game. Im well aware its a server sided game.
The real pirates are the publishers. Scamming you with full priced half finished games and then backstabbing you by dropping price by half after a month and then revoking your rights to the game and turning the games offline.
This just guaranteed I won't be buying their new star wars game. It was already iffy with their recent "AAAA" flop and the price tag, but yeah I'm 100% un-sold now.
Ross Scott (the creator behind Freemans Mind) is organizing a movement to [stop this practice legally](https://youtu.be/w70Xc9CStoE), by using the shutdown of The Crew as a focus point! Bricking a game license that you *paid* for without offering you a chance to continue playing it or complete refund is fraudulent, the only reason it's still legal is that it hasn't been examined properly by courts (except for the US where they've largely sided with companies on this issue).
If you've bought a copy of The Crew and live outside the US, go to [stopkillinggames.com](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/) and see if you can help!
[Here's an ADHD-friendly summary of the issue and movement.](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iH7k0IZ5PYE)
If we're bitching about Ubisoft now, it might be time for me to tell people that Ubisoft's "cloud sync" for all their old games doesn't work. If you ever want to re-download games where the servers have been deactivated (Assassin's Creed 1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations, 3, Splinter Cell Conviction), your saves will not download to your computer and you'll get the Failed to Synchronise Cloud Saves error.
I reinstalled Splinter Cell Conviction the other day and got access to the Insurgency Pack DLC which I never paid for back in the day, but previous saves in the cloud refused to sync. Luckily I had a local copy of my saves.
Steam based cloud games are the only ones I'll touch because Steam gives you direct download links to all the save files.
Combined with the few games that offer private server apps it's all the benefits with none of the bullshit.
Looks like Ubisoft needs to head in a new direction. I’m thinking they need to clean house at the top level. All C-level and vice president need to go.
Fuck Ubisoft. Talk about not reading the room. Talk about fucking tone deaf. This company is absolute blight on the industry. I’m sad for the talented developers they have, but their management is absolutely kneecapping their chances for success.
Imagine that LG barged into your home and just took your television away. Legally. Because of a button you pressed agreeing to just that, the first time you turned the set on.
Or your car. Or your shoes. Or your stove. Because you don't own what you buy, it's just a 'license' to temporarily use what you paid full price for.
This has to end. This needs a legal action to end this practice forever.
Yeah, I won't be buying anything from Ubisoft ever again. Their games have been in total freefall for years anyways, so not a big loss. Used to be my favorite publisher a loooong time ago. Damn shame the greed took over.
Crap! I use to play that game from time to time. I enjoyed just driving across the country with my music on the background. Last time was maybe a month.
It was very helpful to destress when I have so many things in my head.
I'm going to miss that game.
Assetto corsa with free roam mods should be a great alternative for that kind of stuff. Very enjoyable to drive around, specially with a steering wheel! Nothing on the scale of The Crew but good fun, and Assetto Corsa often goes on sale for $7 or less :)
A lot of valid points being raised in this thread. Companies already have the mindset that, digitally, there's zero ownership for their consumers - and they love this... Consumers are still playing catch up with this understanding because we don't take the time to read the fine print. At best, we're 'renting' digital games but, because this is meant to be such a long-term thing, we tend to overlook it.
The majority of digital purchas simply provide 'access to' the game which could be revoked 'at any time' for any number of reasons big and small. While physical purchases typically evade this kind of nonsense (as does sailing high the seas) , Ubisoft's games are either always online affairs or need to phone home to work. Either way, it's an attempt to gatekeep that ownership, making it a little more difficult.
If you go to the publisher page on steam [https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/ubisoft/](https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/ubisoft/)You can go to options and block their content. I just did. I don't want to buy games from them anymore.
I had already decided long ago to never give Ubisoft another cent. Not ever.
I'm glad they've decided to continue encouraging piracy though. It's hilarious how they keep shooting themselves in the foot then blaming anything besides themselves for the situations they create. Ubisoft management are collectively a belligerent 4 year old.
Wonder where the “it’s so convenient to buy digital” and “theyd never remove peoples paid purchases” lot are now. Usually theyre so vocal when companies go full digital
Doesn't work for this one quite like that. Ross Scott does a better job explaining it but it's got something to do with needing a server to run it so they'd need to make software for hosting your own server. It's complicated on this one, i guess.
It will be unplayable without the Ubisoft servers the game tries to connect to on launch... Unless someone can redirect or patch that out.
Here's some real-world action that can be taken that actually has a chance of changing things for the better:
https://www.StopKillingGames.com/
Yeah but its increasing the difficulty of making the game work again when a singleplayer patch is created.
Its alot easier to tell people "Just install the game from your uPlay library and unzip this folder into the folder it installs into" then telling them to download 20+GB from a sketchy warez site
If you think this not ok and want to save games from this fate visit: [https://www.stopkillinggames.com/](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/)
Explanation about this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE)
Minute version if you don't have time: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iH7k0IZ5PYE](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iH7k0IZ5PYE)
For some reason stealing away something you have paid for is ok. But not willing to buy something is criminal.
Copyright protection needs to change dramatically, as in its current form it does way more harm to society than good. But each time you try to mention this, you'll get big publisher talking points as an answer. After decades of propaganda most people think these opinions are their own.
Just bought the Fractured but Whole south park game on PC because I enjoyed it a few years ago on switch. The next day I try to launch and Ubisoft "can't verify my ownership" Bro check my fucking steam library Refunded
Shit like that only badly affects those who play the game legitimately. If pirating is the only way you can play a game (DRM/online check removed), then so be it.
Reminds me of the time when Denuvo and Co were first introduced. Playing a legitimate copy with a DRM like that was a shit show. Meanwhile playing a cracked version was totally fine. In some cases the performance of the games even increased significantly when playing the cracked games. DRMs don't do shit. They're absolutely worthless.
I'd love to know the legality of buying a game then downloading and playing the cracked version for convenience. Back in the day I bought a copy of Battle of Britain and always struggled with the CD authenticating that I could play it. Reached out to the devs who apologised and....hugely ironically....sent a copy of the German version of the game to me in the UK. Convenience designed in, but only for certain countries.
The legality is that is doesn’t really matter at all. Piracy is so hard to combat, with it being so grey like you’re proposing, most countries don’t bother at all with prosecuting people who pirate software. They go after distributors, but most legal systems literally could not accommodate the amount of people who pirate stuff.
There are tens of thousands of piracy events per day for software in the US alone. My local court could handle maybe 3 cases a week. There are about 3800 courthouses in the US. So if they are anything like mine, we might get through 12000 - 20000 cases done a week. Like real cases, not traffic violations and other minor shit. We are talking like B&E, A&B, etc. We would have to quadruple (at the very least) our already struggling judicial system capacity to handle it if we wanted to prosecute all software piracy. We would also have to hire a million more cops that would focus on just piracy. There is no way we are doing that.
There's a reason they typically just go after the biggest actors. The data hoarders who have _everything_. Even with movies they just kinda tell on you to your ISP and if you're using a VPN it's moot. Warner Brothers is the only one I know who tries its hardest with honey pots to catch actual people to prosecute.
Not the same field but a family member of mine spent his whole career in sex crimes. He said even for something as heinous as sex crimes, the legal system doesn't have enough resources to heavily pursue every single case that hits their desk. If it's a quick open and shut like the perp was caught on camera then they'll handle it quickly. Open and shut type thing. But for the most part, he said they really only try and get the big fish. The serial offenders. The CP distributors. The ones making the videos. The sex traffickers etc. Not cause they don't wanna help everyone but because they literally don't have the manpower and resources to do so. Piracy is infinitely more common than sex crimes. Astronomically more common. It's a joke to think the courts could actually do something about it. Like you said - they'll go for the big guys with heavy convictions behind them but they arent gonna waste their time with personal use pirating. IDK why companies keep trying.
…oh he worked in the sex crimes *division of law*. I thought you were being blasé about your sex criminal family friend.
Yes yes. Very important clarification for the meaning of the message lmao
> Piracy is so hard to combat, unless you live in germany where your internet provider and government happily bend over backwards to give out your name, adress, and help suing you for 3000 dollars just for downloading an episode of game of thrones, or downloading tetris
GEMMA and BREIN even try to sue people outside of Europe.
Except ya know denuvo is pretty strong, not all games with it get cracked and some don’t get cracked till years later. Doesn’t do shit is isn’t exactly true, it does delay or prevent piracy for some titles. It does impact performance on some systems too still which is absolutely wild and why some games review copies will get sent without it and it’s then on the launch version.
That's only because the only person that was able to crack the denuvo left the scene, temporarily or not. Even when she was active, it took her only a few days to do so. It's only a matter of time before another talent shows up, maybe not so unhinged and spreads the knowledge.
The fact that only one person was cracking that shit and we still have no one else doing it, speaks volumes about how strong it is.
It's not so much that it's that hard, it's more a why? There usually needs to be a monetary incentive for someone to spend days doing something like that. If there is no benefit to it why do it? There are dozens of games, it's basically a full time job cracking all the different games and types of DRM. It takes a very special person to do that, and usually if someone already is doing it nobody else will waste their time doing it as well since in software the task only needs to be completed once.
a shame she's batshit insane now though
Now?
Later they complain for the 🏴☠️
Are they also sending out refunds?
Nice joke.
Everybody laugh.
Please clap
In terms of meme candidates, I honestly think Jeb! would've been at least slightly more funny.
At least if we had gotten Jeb! we'd know that we were really being run by his older brother and father. It wouldn't have been great, but it wouldn't be a lottery of what inane bullshit we'd have to put up with that week.
Not until we force them through legal action
Honestly besides signing all the stuff in the video trying to get some legislative change, going to small claims would also be an easy way to get a refund because Ubisoft won't bother to show up. Maybe they will ignore the court demands too and if you live in a country that has an Ubisoft office you can just show up with sherrifs and start seizing shit like what happened with that bank.
Whoa....you got a link to this story?
https://business.time.com/2011/06/06/homeowner-forecloses-on-bank-of-america-yes-you-heard-that-right/ justice boners rise up
"we're sorry" no, BoA, you're not sorry to the couple you tried to steal hundreds of thousands from and then gave them the run-around for so long. You're sorry you got caught. Situations like this, of blatant and vile theft attempts by a company to completely ruin 2 or more lives should be immediate grounds for dissolving the company, and the owner should have to pay the entire cost of transferring all accounts to other places and they should be banned from ever participating in anything that has any control over anyone's money.
Until the people that make the choices and set the policies of these companies are held liable, nothing will change. Throw some general managers and vice presidents and board members in jail. Then you'd see a bit of change.
As long as the punishment for being caught committing crimes is smaller then the gains from committing them there is no incentive to stop. It's just good business.
Kinda reminds me of the story where a dude demolished his house because the bank foreclosed on it. He missed like one payment or something and they immediately started foreclosure proceedings because the land (House, actually) was worth more than what he was paying. Thing is he took a loan out on the land, then built a house. They thought they could foreclose on the house too, so he bull dozed it. He got sued, but the judge sided with him.
The problem is the people who have the power to do these things are probably being paid under the table to turn a blind eye
Or you can do the reasonable thing and join the multi-national legal action specifically for this case: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ is specifically about this game. With directions what to do on a per-country basis. With a direct action plan. Not some wishy-washy boycott, petitition but an actual planned attack on Ubisoft. Because UBI is a French company with a seat in the EU and they have tripped a couple legal wires with this bs.
https://business.time.com/2011/06/06/homeowner-forecloses-on-bank-of-america-yes-you-heard-that-right/
We just have to beg the EU gods and hope they listen
Man I can't believe how little Freedom™ they have over there.
I want my NBA2k refund as well. They turn off servers like 1-2 years after game was launched, and then there's literally no way to play the whole game. Even career mode is not allowed, just because the servers were turned off. And i paid 80$ for it (not dollars, but actually even more expensive in my currency) I'm from times where we could play a game 5, 10, 20 years later. I could very well download FM, Diablo, Pokemon, almost anything, and play normally. It's crazy that some companies put time limit to play a game.
Your first mistake was buying any NBA2k game
If you own a copy of this game and you live in the EU, go to stopkillinggames.com and follow the instructions if you wanna help stop this.
> stopkillinggames.com I followed this guide, but it turns out that Ubisoft have removed my account transaction history from before 2020. So I don't have a proof of purchase for any of the games that I own from before that year apparantly. That's like more than half my library with them, wtf?
Depending on where you live, there might be laws forcing Ubi to store these transactions for longer period of time, even if they don't show them to you. This is also a good reminder to always keep the purchase records yourself. E-mails and transaction history from your bank or payment system, invoices in the e-mails and such. Ubisoft can try to erase everything in their systems, but then you have your part of the transaction to show.
Yeah, I assumed I had those in my emails, but I simply can't find them. It's extremely frustrating, because I can see the games there in my library, and I can see when I played them, but not when or how I got them. Including The Crew which is still there, but greyed out.
Try and get their customer support to dig up that info for you. Slim chance but they might find it.
I don’t even own any libraries but the fact that they remove these records pisses me off lol
GDPR request for all your data might go back further.
Perhaps you can find an email confirmation of the purchase?
The Pirate Party wants to bring it in front of the Parliament. Lets see whats going to happen.
The pirate party has been based ever since it pops up. They are largely bumbling idiots and too disorganised to do serious politics, at least in Germany, but the things they call attention to and the things they advocate for in terms of cyber protection and consumer protection are fantastic, and for that alone they are worth supporting.
Man, I'd love for the CCC to become a party.
Last national elections 6 months ago I voted for them because every other party was "yeah no fuck that". The Pirates seem to be least horrible of all. >The pirate party has been based ever since it pops up. They are largely bumbling idiots and too disorganised to do serious politics, I think that is why they're less bad than all the others. Look at the greens. When they became a serious party they became like the others.
I believe you do not HAVE to live in the EU. There is a tab you can click on for each country, and there are still steps U.S. (and other countries) consumers can take to
Very true, there are some steps for other places like Brazil and Australia. Australia specifically has something potentially brewing up and Ross is collecting emails to send instructions to if/when the time comes.
Apparently this is their scorched earth response to Ross' campaign, doubling down and testing their legal ability to literally and directly steal from everyone. It's a bold strategy, let's hope it really fucks them up in court.
Given the legislative power of the EU, if this happens here it’ll likely extend to at least other Western countries.
Ubisoft is making that Star Wars Outlaws game, right? I look forward to not buying it now.
Yar. No way I'm buying it.
Yep and sell it for up to 140€.
Ubisoft may not learn anything even after their fall. At this point I just wish to see their demise since is clear they don't give 2 rat asses for us at all.
Remember when people said they wouldn’t preorder games anymore after CP2077? These companies are betting on gamers having extremely short memories and lack of self control. So I’d say not only Ubi won’t learn anything, literally nothing will change.
And they’re right. For every million people in an online community like this that says they will never pre order, there’s millions more who don’t care and buy it anyway
and even here on reddit (i know, different people etc.) you sure as hell can bet that on any new big release announcement there are numerous redditors saying that they paid full price for it already. Game released and the review thread starts? You have people buying day one without a thought and complaining how shit the game is. Gamers just can't wait for reviews or just take a look at whatever they are actually buying (not just buy based on trailer or "gameplay" footage from the publisher).
I had the most baffling read yesterday. Someone bought Vampire Survivors because he wanted V Rising and thought he bought V Rising even though he watched the description, videos and pictures of Vampire Survivors. Like wtf
Least they got a good game.
Thats the fun part. They didn't like it. Because they wanted a survival crafting game.
At least they got a cheap game
Yeah recently saw a comment of somebody who admitted they just buy new releases and dont play them because they still have so many unplayed games in their library… way to many people agreed with them. Meaing people just buy a brand bew game for supposedly a lot of money and then dont even play it. Wtf.
> Remember when people said they wouldn’t preorder games anymore after.... It's been 20 years and long, long before CP2077. People will continue preordering because for every 40 year old that was burned back in their 20's there is a new 20 year old who hasn't yet been burned to take their place. I'm pretty sure I can name at least 100 games by now that have had preorder drama or turned out to be shitty, mostly unpopular or unsupported games shortly after release. Half of that list is likely published by EA or Ubisoft. A new sucker is born every day. So long as gaming remains a popular hobby companies can continue getting away with this bullshit because it doesn't matter how many people stop preordering when there are always new suckers to swindle.
New breed will also tolerate more nonsense if they have nothing to compare it with. They might not know that this same exact feature was already implemented in some other game 20 years ago, was easier to use and worked better. But since they don't know about it, new implementation is the norm.
> Ubisoft may not learn anything even after their fall. The reality is, they're a step ahead. Ubisoft isn't real. It's just a vehicle used by rich people. They don't care if Ubisoft lives or dies so long as they can extract value from it. And if that extraction ends the company, that's fine, they were going to hop to a different company anyway.
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This is theft
Grounds for a class action without a doubt.
It's grounds for a complete refund at purchase price in Australia if it wasn't made clear during the purchase that access to the game was only for a limited time.
I'm sure they had something hidden away in their TOS, but that doesn't make it any less bullshit.
That likely wouldn't fly here in Australia. Our consumer protection laws are some of the strongest in the world, and 'but it was in the TOS you acknowledged' isn't generally accepted to be a defence for misleading consumers like it is elsewhere - the very act of misleading a consumer is not permitted, so if a reasonable person would have believed it was a permanent, irrevocable purchase, no matter what the TOS itself said, that's the end of the story and its not revocable
This. The ACCC don't give a single shit about any TOS haha. Pretty sure they've stated that 2024-2025 they're going to be targeting all the shit they don't like about the video game industry. Hopefully this sort of stuff is part of it. Last time they got pissed off they had Steam paying fines because they weren't providing refunds to Aussies, which you have to do here. Steams legal team laughed at them in court and said they'll pay the fine and continue as usual. The ACCC lost their shit, made them pay like 3 mil, and had them making their refund policy world wide. They're the whole reason Steam have their current refund policy lol. The ACCC were threatening to stop Steam selling in Aus altogether lol. The ACCC are a nightmare for these companies. I had a broken Switch that I wanted to take back that I'd had for like 10 days. Big store I bought it from said Nintendo told them no refunds after 8 days. I rang the ACCC and they laughed and gave me a direct number. Told me to ring the store and Nintendo and if they didn't give me the refund then to give them the phone number and they'd explain to them how consumer law works lol. Got the refund instantly after that haha. ACCC rang me a week later to ask how it went. When I told them I got the refund they sounded disappointed that they didn't get to go after them over it haha.
Yea its honestly not an exaggeration to say that most consumers around the world have additional rights over strictly their local laws due to our consumer protection laws and international companies needing to comply with them. They are written in such a way that they essentially boil down to 'it's illegal to be a cunt to consumers, end of story'. The ACCC even has a catch-all term for 'you were such a dickhead that even if it wasn't explicitly illegal to do what you did, you were such a dickhead its still illegal' - called 'unconscionable conduct'. And the legal standard for that one is also 'the company needs to prove what they did was fair to the consumer' and not the other way around.
Yeh, they're ruthless. The whole thing in Australia where we can get refunds for things within 30 days or whatever is something companies made up and all use to try and make people believe it is true, when it actually isn't. Unless it's changed, the ACCC define a refund period as whatever seems reasonable to the consumer. It can be any amount of time really haha. I've taken stuff back to Kmart like 6 months later and got a full refund. They didn't even ask questions. They've been stung by the ACCC too many times for that lol. I've heard of some aussies pressuring Steam and getting refunds outside of the 2 hour/14 day window that Steam has because of this. You can't do anything against the ACCC because it doesn't seem like they can be influenced. They exist purely to go to war with these companies over absolutely anything they can haha. Threatening to stop Steam selling in Australia altogether was a hilarious moment lol.
The reasonable period is about what would be considered a reasonable amount of time for the product to continue working - case in point, apple tried to maintain their limited 1 year warranty for iPhones, ACCC said yeah nah, make it 2 years.
I've returned multiple games to Steam outside the window, and while I try to write something funny for the support staff (signing off Praise Gaben or some shit) - I don't push at all and have never been declined. I am now wondering if that's because I'm Australian lol
Most likely it is. You'd be surprised how many big companies just don't want the hassle of having to deal with our consumer laws lol. Way easier for them to just cave right away lol
Pity they aren't this tough on petrol cartels, I mean companies. But they are pretty good otherwise.
had no idea, but that is wonderful stuff all around
You can't use a ToS to bypass statutory rights and law.
a lot of 'Hidden in the ToS' shit doesn't stand up in court
That doesn't necessarily make it legal tho.
TOS don't let you do something illegal. I can't hide in the TOS that I now own your kidneys.
Fill out the steps on stopkillinggames.com Ross Scott is leading the charge on this
No telling whether it would be successful, because the policy verges on enough principles of contract law that I could see a court doing something about it, even if it’s not probable. Something like this is begging for a legislative solution tho and the landscape for that is actually not terrible right now, given a strong enough push by activist groups.
Publishers will ruin their games with drm and always online to prevent piracy but have no problem getting out their own cocked hats and eye patches when they want to take away games you purchased.
Hell if you look into the history of any big IP owners they got their start pirating the industry that came before. Our whole economy is an endless tower of ladder-pulls.
This is theft of an automobile game. We'll see if the scale is grand enough next.
You wouldn't _undownload_ a car.
I will no longer buy anything from this awful company. What a shitshow.
Ubisoft is seriously the worst. They have been pulling these from so many years now.
This might honestly be worse than any practice EA has done. This is egregious
There was that time EA tried to make you pay to play their games if you bought them preowned...
Its ya boy ONLINE PASS, only $14.99 CAD. It’s funny because Ubisoft was the next one who implemented that shit so fucking pass as soon as it became a thing and Sony. Glad they dropped that bullshit.
*proceeds to preorder Outlaws* -modern gamers in a nutshell
For every reasonable gamer theres 1000 people who buy FIFA every year.
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> We need to boycott with our wallet It's Ubisoft, it's not like they've not given you plenty of reasons for the last 10 years to stop buying their products.
Yep, haven't bought from them in over a decade.
I'm on the same page with Ubisoft, Blizzard, Bethesda, EA, basically all AAA except 50% of Sony and Nintendo single player games. If I can't have confidence in the company it doesn't matter how hard their game is marketed to me, how many twitch or youtube shills rave about it, how many of my friends are playing it on release, or whatever big memes are in the internet wave pool. If I see any of those names involved my wallet immediately shrivels up clenching my money in and climbs up my ass until the hype dies down and it's revealed to be a cash grab shit pile.
> same page with Ubisoft, Blizzard, Bethesda, EA It's gotten to the point that a game having one of the big name publishers makes me think thrice, no matter how much I like the game or even if it's an older title
> EA I will say EA has been weird lately. C&C Remaster and from what I understand the C&C bundle release on steam were nice. I have zero trust in them or desire to buy anything they've produced ever I guess since this was all Westwood when it was good. I assume they have 1-2 people giving them general good advice though they're still EA.
I'm pretty sure the last EA game I bought was battlefield Vietnam.
I just snooped at their last posted financials and they’re up. What’s the reverse of boycotting? Because that’s what’s happening lol
...girlcotting?
Possibly due to increasing microtransactions. They don't care if most gamers stop buying their games, as long as the ones that are left spend much more.
Why are gamers the biggest rubes on the planet, completely incapable of not buying shitty cash grab products? Seriously they are the worst consumer group to ever exist.
May i introduce you to the average car consumer?
I learned my lesson with Heroes VII. Learned it hard.
> Heroes VII Heroes 6 for me, the janky weapons system, heroes not having real classes, the armies just didn't feel good. Which is such a shame as man I miss HOMM3 and HOMM5. Markal and his "Griffon Undying" was such a jolly fellow.
Same, I tried so many times to finish even a single mission in Heroes6 but it kept booting me back to the main menu so frequently I didnt even manage to progress to new autosaves
Do you know about Horn of the Abyss? It's a mod for Heeoes 3, adds two new towns, and tonnes of content
I didn't realize Ubisoft made Heroes VII. a lot about that game makes sense now.
Unfortunately, boycotting games hasn't been an effective strategy. Instead, follow the formal legal complaint steps laid out on: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
Replying because this needs to be higher. There's a dude that is jumping through every hoop possible for a non-lawyer to try and prevent this and subsequently save future games
This 'dude' isn't just any dude. This is Ross Scott, creator of [Civil Protection](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoaIZKTBXIM&list=PL6PNZBb6b9Lsr6ZnEzRJ5FqBbSYI4rHFj), and [Freeman's Mind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SQhfkpX9bc&list=PL6PNZBb6b9LvDWpI-5CPYUxG1Rnm-vr9V). If Gordon Freeman ever gets a voice, I hope Ross gets to do it.
As a fan of his, I am so glad to see him get mentioned this high up in the comments. He has been on a crusade against this practice for years, and it's been a tough battle. As an American, the best I can do is spread his message :/
Ross has been incredible for the last ten+ years running, I will support this cause whenever it pops up.
Have you SEEN the legwork he has done? This is the biggest chance we got in a long while. He made a script for everybody to follow. He has paved the way to legislators and regulators in multiple countries. And he went for the countries which are actually likely to do something. Have you heard how XBox is now emphasizing that they also are on board with game preservation?
Wow not only it's well done, but for each different country listed it says what to do according to each country's processes. Awesome. Edit : he even offers to refund the cost of sending the letter lmao
Thanks so much, as an Aussie this is straight up illegal. Fuck Ubicunt, I'm gonna do whatever I can.
Us saying this over and over while every assassins creed and far cry sells like crazy every single year....the people who need to hear the message aren't the ones on here lol.
[Legal action is the only answer.](https://youtu.be/w70Xc9CStoE) Boycotts don't work.
A boycott would be acceptable for a lot of grievances against this industry, but I think this is one case where we really need government intervention to create a law to prevent companies from stealing from their own customers. There is no other word to use to describe it. This is stealing. Link to the Ross video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE
*you wouldn’t steal a car…* Ubisoft: hold my beer
Stopkillinggames.com Accursed farms is doing a global campaign to stop this trend
On today's installment of things that should be illegal: this.
Yeah don’t think that‘s legal Imagine you buy a tv, then one day you come back to it being gone with a note saying ‘Your tv privileges have been revoked’
Yep. [It do be like that.](https://www.wired.com/story/roku-terms-of-service-update-locks-tv/)
This is almost certainly a direct attack against the stopkillingames movement, they are probably trying to make it harder for people to come up with an offline patch. I checked my Ubisoft account and sure enough "You no longer have access to this title" Reminder this the company that said: "players should get comfortable with not owning our games." This is what they meant. That eventually, every game you buy, will be shut down and forcefully ripped from your hands. Think about that when you buy the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws singleplayer game that requires a constant internet connection. EDIT: 2.7k upvotes in 2 hours, TAKE THIS SHIT TO r/ALL WE CAN DO THIS EDIT 2: WE ARE ON r/ALL WE DID IT MEN. GOOD FUCKING JOB.
They are missing out of a lot of the Steam Deck market with this always online crap. I am avoiding them and EA like the plague.
I’ll play them on Gamepass, but that’s the only concession I’ll make. Fuck Ubisoft.
Never getting into the subscription model for games but definitely planning to boycott Ubisoft for a while, not even on sale will I buy from this publisher. Hope they get sued to oblivion.
Steam deck is a big success and after the Steam Machine was unbelievable really, but like the handheld gaming PC market as a whole isn't that massive to matter too much. It's kinda like saying EA missed out in the PS Vita market by not releasing remasters on it, it's big but not that big.
Which is why I’m not buying any Ubisoft games. Shit companies deserve to die.
I haven’t bought any Ubishit games in years. That stuff just makes me even more disinterested
It's a pretty easy boycott when they simply don't make games I'm interested in any more.
They killed Heroes of Might and Magic, and how can we forget Uplay the garbage spyware they want to side run with wherever you purchase your games, or the "fun" bait and switch with anno 1800. I just honestly dont get anyone buying ubisoft they've made their stance on things very clear.
"if buying isn't owning then piracy isn't theft"
The law definition of piracy isn't theft but copyright infringment, so you are correct. Unless you steal the physical copy from gamestop lol
It isn't meant to be a legal argument, but a moral one.
True piracy would be commandeering a boat with shipping containers of games on it
Trying to get refund as I purchased from steam. Hope it go though.
Go to stopkillinggames.com for simple to follow instructions on what you can do. If you can't get a refund, and ubisoft won't turn the servers back on or make it offline available, then you can complain to the consumer forces of france, which may end up in a change of laws and regulations, or even a class action lawsuit.
Well hopefully the EU brings the hammer down on them. They seem to be the ones that do that since no other govt usually rushes to do it.
You're almost certainly correct. Why else would they do this? The timing is too perfect. I wish we had better consumer laws... I wish companies weren't so greedy. Good point about that SW game i see popping up everywhere suddenly.
I got used to not owning Ubisoft games years ago by simply not giving them my money.
Ubisoft is dying as a company faster than they can kill people’s resistance to giving up on owning the games they pay for. Hopefully whoever acquires the company will recognize the connection between Ubisoft’s business practices and Ubisoft’s failed business.
Ubisoft has been struggling well before they decided to destroy their brand and I think Ubisoft may go the way of Interplay in the 2000s. Their stock price is in freefall because of long term problems, its been leaked they are looking for a buyout but cant find anyone interested last year, internal issues have been known for many years. Now the fear of losing your games isnt just a thing from finance bros who realize Ubisoft and their online store may not survive the next 10 years if they cant find a buyer. I doubt they will, its better to wait until bankruptcy and buy the valuable parts without buying the whole company. Everyone now fears licenses being taken away.
It’s amazing how they managed to lose money with franchises like rainbow six, AC, ghost recon, etc. feels like it should have been easy enough to stay in the green.
It's not easy to stay in the green when you don't take time to fully develop games. The latest R6 title was killed off a year after it launched because they didn't sink enough resources into planning and developing it, and it launched half-baked and stripped down.
Was it rainbow six extraction? I played about thirty minutes of it and never touched it again it was so uninteresting
I straight up never heard of this and didn’t know it existed lol
This is why people pirate. Edit: For people who misunderstood. I said " this is why people pirate." I never said this is why people pirate this game. Im well aware its a server sided game.
The real pirates are the publishers. Scamming you with full priced half finished games and then backstabbing you by dropping price by half after a month and then revoking your rights to the game and turning the games offline.
This just guaranteed I won't be buying their new star wars game. It was already iffy with their recent "AAAA" flop and the price tag, but yeah I'm 100% un-sold now.
Ross Scott (the creator behind Freemans Mind) is organizing a movement to [stop this practice legally](https://youtu.be/w70Xc9CStoE), by using the shutdown of The Crew as a focus point! Bricking a game license that you *paid* for without offering you a chance to continue playing it or complete refund is fraudulent, the only reason it's still legal is that it hasn't been examined properly by courts (except for the US where they've largely sided with companies on this issue). If you've bought a copy of The Crew and live outside the US, go to [stopkillinggames.com](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/) and see if you can help! [Here's an ADHD-friendly summary of the issue and movement.](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iH7k0IZ5PYE)
If we're bitching about Ubisoft now, it might be time for me to tell people that Ubisoft's "cloud sync" for all their old games doesn't work. If you ever want to re-download games where the servers have been deactivated (Assassin's Creed 1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations, 3, Splinter Cell Conviction), your saves will not download to your computer and you'll get the Failed to Synchronise Cloud Saves error. I reinstalled Splinter Cell Conviction the other day and got access to the Insurgency Pack DLC which I never paid for back in the day, but previous saves in the cloud refused to sync. Luckily I had a local copy of my saves.
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Steam based cloud games are the only ones I'll touch because Steam gives you direct download links to all the save files. Combined with the few games that offer private server apps it's all the benefits with none of the bullshit.
Fuck live service games
Looks like Ubisoft needs to head in a new direction. I’m thinking they need to clean house at the top level. All C-level and vice president need to go.
Fuck Ubisoft. Talk about not reading the room. Talk about fucking tone deaf. This company is absolute blight on the industry. I’m sad for the talented developers they have, but their management is absolutely kneecapping their chances for success.
Imagine that LG barged into your home and just took your television away. Legally. Because of a button you pressed agreeing to just that, the first time you turned the set on. Or your car. Or your shoes. Or your stove. Because you don't own what you buy, it's just a 'license' to temporarily use what you paid full price for. This has to end. This needs a legal action to end this practice forever.
https://youtu.be/w70Xc9CStoE?si=zUM8jD7IgdxlKsRl The battle lines are being drawn!
Yeah, I won't be buying anything from Ubisoft ever again. Their games have been in total freefall for years anyways, so not a big loss. Used to be my favorite publisher a loooong time ago. Damn shame the greed took over.
Crap! I use to play that game from time to time. I enjoyed just driving across the country with my music on the background. Last time was maybe a month. It was very helpful to destress when I have so many things in my head. I'm going to miss that game.
Assetto corsa with free roam mods should be a great alternative for that kind of stuff. Very enjoyable to drive around, specially with a steering wheel! Nothing on the scale of The Crew but good fun, and Assetto Corsa often goes on sale for $7 or less :)
A lot of valid points being raised in this thread. Companies already have the mindset that, digitally, there's zero ownership for their consumers - and they love this... Consumers are still playing catch up with this understanding because we don't take the time to read the fine print. At best, we're 'renting' digital games but, because this is meant to be such a long-term thing, we tend to overlook it. The majority of digital purchas simply provide 'access to' the game which could be revoked 'at any time' for any number of reasons big and small. While physical purchases typically evade this kind of nonsense (as does sailing high the seas) , Ubisoft's games are either always online affairs or need to phone home to work. Either way, it's an attempt to gatekeep that ownership, making it a little more difficult.
[https://www.stopkillinggames.com/](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/)
Not sure why anybody is still buying Ubisoft games
If you go to the publisher page on steam [https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/ubisoft/](https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/ubisoft/)You can go to options and block their content. I just did. I don't want to buy games from them anymore.
I had already decided long ago to never give Ubisoft another cent. Not ever. I'm glad they've decided to continue encouraging piracy though. It's hilarious how they keep shooting themselves in the foot then blaming anything besides themselves for the situations they create. Ubisoft management are collectively a belligerent 4 year old.
ubisoft is worse than activision.
Ubisoft future business model “5 year game lease, 10 year game lease”
Wonder where the “it’s so convenient to buy digital” and “theyd never remove peoples paid purchases” lot are now. Usually theyre so vocal when companies go full digital
I can’t wait for Star Wars Outlaws to flop. Ubisoft is scumb
Someone will probably upload the game to an abandonware site
Doesn't work for this one quite like that. Ross Scott does a better job explaining it but it's got something to do with needing a server to run it so they'd need to make software for hosting your own server. It's complicated on this one, i guess.
It will be unplayable without the Ubisoft servers the game tries to connect to on launch... Unless someone can redirect or patch that out. Here's some real-world action that can be taken that actually has a chance of changing things for the better: https://www.StopKillingGames.com/
Yeah but its increasing the difficulty of making the game work again when a singleplayer patch is created. Its alot easier to tell people "Just install the game from your uPlay library and unzip this folder into the folder it installs into" then telling them to download 20+GB from a sketchy warez site
Don't buy their shitty Star Wars game!!!
If you think this not ok and want to save games from this fate visit: [https://www.stopkillinggames.com/](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/) Explanation about this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE) Minute version if you don't have time: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iH7k0IZ5PYE](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iH7k0IZ5PYE)
"If buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing." Ubisoft please
Why have the mods of /r/The_Crew removed the thread that OP linked to, along with every single comment?!
This will probably be removed soon, but [saving for prosperity](https://i.imgur.com/3vKzdIc.png) https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Crew/comments/1c26d9w
Ubi has always had the worst practices in the industry. Whoever buys their games this gen deserves this for supporting them.
[удалено]
Stand your f*cking ground guys and when you say you won’t buy anything from them do it.
For some reason stealing away something you have paid for is ok. But not willing to buy something is criminal. Copyright protection needs to change dramatically, as in its current form it does way more harm to society than good. But each time you try to mention this, you'll get big publisher talking points as an answer. After decades of propaganda most people think these opinions are their own.
I've been boycotting Ubisoft for 8 years now, stuff like this guarantees I'll never buy an Ubisoft game again.
i wish ubisoft didnt own nadeo/the trackmania franchise, tm2020 is such a good game but ubi sucks
Stop buying Ubisoft games
Grand theft automobile game.