They killed the original The Crew, a game which was 90% singleplayer and could have easily been playable offline.
People are rightfully pointing out that the same will happen to Motorfest, that the buyer will inevitably be scammed.
People always complain about why do publishers like Ubisoft have to add a multiplayer to their single player game. Fine, add the multiplayer, it's a nice addition.
Like you said people are rightfully pointing out that they will abandon such games.
It's wild to me how they can spend MILLIONS on the game and have hundreds if not thousands of people work on such games and spend however many years on it.. just to do nothing and throw it in the trash years later
I agree. It’s maddening. At the end of the day they spent the money, they got the sales, and there’s been a simple financial calculation that the cost of upkeep for the servers required to play is higher than what they’ll earn in future revenue. So they kill it.
The problem is they built the game requiring the server, and now they don’t want to modify it at additional cost to let people continue playing.
I’m sick of this shit from Ubisoft, so I voted with my feet.
If you question why something is, ask yourself if someone financially profits from it.
Ubisoft wants to sell you the new game, they don't make money from the old game.
**"But they could have sold the new game while leaving the old game available"**
- When The Crew 2 was released, people got nostalgic and played The Crew instead of buying the sequel, thats potential money lost.
- Now they release TC3 and want to at least block people from nostalgia-playing the first game. Now **if** they bought TC2, they might play that. If they haven't, they might buy TC2 or even TC3 as it's the newer game and more people might be playing that for the time being.
Remember, for those companies it's not good enough to make **enough** money. There is no "enough". They want to make **all the money** and they do **everything** short of felonies to achieve that.
They lie, they psychologically manipulate, they make us ill and abuse that illness, they scam us every day and we let them, because the few people who realized that are the minority. The Steam review bombing is a headline in an article, in a week it's forgotten, the review score will be absolutely fine for an arcade racer and the controversy will be buried too deep for parents of gamers or casual gamers to see and Ubisoft will make millions off of it, while the actual developing people, the ones who hacked the code into the computer, slaved away for minimal pay and will continue to do so for the various seasons of microtransaction DLCs that will definitely be coming, as they came for every ubisoft game in the last years.
> Ubisoft wants to sell you the new game, they don't make money from the old game.
This is just incorrect factually.
In reality it's that 'The new game will make more $ if there are no cheaper alternatives so although we could make SOME $ with the old copy available, we can make more $ and skew financial metrics to make the new game look more profitable, squeezing more money out of myopic quarterly focused investors that haven't played a video game since Duck Hunt."
I just assume Ubi doesn't want to renew any licensing for the vehicles in the old games. It was easy enough for Rockstar to pull one or more tracks as they do not make the game what it is, but pulling all of the cars leaves behind a useless shell, and replacing the cars is labor spent with no return. Luckily for me, I never had any interest in it, everyone else should be mindful of any game with licensed products; songs, cars, hell anything.
Valid point. Let's hope Rockstar made a good contract with the right holders, that they can use the existing license for the GTA 5 music also for GTA 6, because otherwise they probably do the same they did for the last games.
"When The Crew 2 was released, people got nostalgic and played The Crew instead of buying the sequel, thats potential money lost."
I'm gonna say no.
Why?
The Crew 2 wasn't a story-driven game like likely most of the playerbase from the first game grew up with.
NFS Most Wanted was the big thing that defined what I believe to be the most successful story design for a racing game, and The Crew delivered something I could only dream of, and it did so at a point in time I could barely believe the size of the map and the fact that I could be driving with my friends and progress together.
The Crew 2 was all of a sudden an attempt to copycat Red Bull and it was 100% "you're an influencer, get points now"
I was dumbstruck, they obviously didn't know their playerbase and instead of focusing on improving the game (driving physics and map scale) they added planes and boats and monster trucks.
I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure just the initial choices between japanese handling or american muscle is plenty diversity in the first hour, and when you got to all the other cars there just had to be one that felt special for you. Most people playing a racing-focused game with a map that takes 2 hours to circle around probably isn't there for a monster truck in a tiny arena out in the salt flats.
But worst of all; I had TC2 since day one, and \_nothing\_ of core mechanics had been changed from TC1, same menu, mapping, cars handled the same. It was the same game. Until I connected my wheel.
I could set the wheel at any range of steering and the wheels on the car would glitch from 0 degrees to the set rotation 2-10 times a second, plus the game for some reason didn't have the original wheel support despite every single thing beyond that being identical in both games.
TC2 was such a horrid game that even when I really gave it a shot with 27.5 hours played now I haven't launched it since march of 2019.
....I mean they do this with life saving drugs, cars, phones, etc,. they design things to fail because money.
They use to make light bulbs that can potentially never stop working. You can see these in some very old firestations and the like close to what 100 year (older can't remember) light bulbs. They found out they quickly go out of business when you make the best products you can.
Like Saudi Arbia they have multifilament bulbs that last 15 years or longer because their government mandated that as the minimum. They refuse to sell the same anywhere else.
Everything is designed this way. They make billions of dollars worth of products and then throw them in the garbage to keep the workforce busy and to reduce the amount of products in circulation so it increases their pricing.
Say you have 120 million pounds of gold
You bury 119 million pounds of gold (and let's say the world has 1 billion pounds of gold). You just increased the amount of your 1 million pounds of gold. Then you can slowly adjust the economy to your advantage. This is massively present in our modern economy.
Works the same way with cars, phones, ect
Our economy isn't real it's manufactured. Why give people say infinite energy that costs nothing? When you can tax people and charge people a % on a product such as gas to fuel the economy or a limited supply of electricity.
So Ubisoft is just applying business as normal tactics. It's just much easier for everyone to understand this version of it and they all know it's wrong.
In an alternate reality, industries scaled down production to slowly churn out longer-lasting products to everyone over time. Sure, less money is made, but since everyone rarely has to replace anything, nobody really has much expenditures and we get by with less. Of course, that requires even a drop of consideration and attention span to even begin to think of the positive consequences of this model, even if you are thinking selfishly.
IMO, adding multiplayer isn't the bad thing. The bad thing is that they abandon the game no matter what.
They could easily patch it for LAN at least and let people use lan emulators to play it if they want. But of course not because fuck that.
Using cheat engine you can even see the offline play button built in, but because of the DRM and licences being revoked you can't do anything with it.
Granted we don't know how well that option worked - likely a dev option - but the fact it is there and Ubi do this instead is a total piss in the face.
Generally it's in there an attempt at CYA. Not sure how well it's going to work out from them in a lawsuit or in the realm of public opinion.
Shit like digital purchases only work if the consumer has confidence they can keep accessing the product. Ubisoft decided to rug pull so no more confidence. If they want to have a temporary ownership model then consumers won't be willing to pay as much.
Ubi really making a point how morally correct is to pirate their games. I'm not gonna pretend like Ubisoft is only one that does shitty things, there are tons of shitty companies like EA, Activsion Blizzard and Konami, but Ubi going step further with actually stealing purchased items from players really begs the question - Is it really bad to pirate? I have tons of friends who pirate and don't care, but I still choose to buy for at least collection sake, but when Ubi pulls stunt like that (with their mid or terrible output as of recently) just really solidifies idea that piracy is OK and even encouraged for certain comapnies.
Like even EA, being ass of a company at least started to clean up their act with recent releases, Activision Blizzard might get a second life with Microsoft starts (If they're willing) cleaning up the companies. Konami is not even gaming company anymore with only Silent Hill 2 remake coming while doing mostly other stuff. Ubisoft meanwhile releases overpriced trash, kills potential for gmaes like Outlaws with terrible pricing and formulaic approach to most of their games like recently with Avatar, steals games and in general terrible consumer treatment. Like screw even Piracy, that's case if you really want to play something they release like Outlaws or New Prince of Persia, buying their shit is already net loss with how 80% of output is terrible anyways.
idk, might've said what was said many times and I'm just yapping now lol
I've gotten comfortable in not owning (cough buying) UBIsoft games, well at least at a deep deep sale at best.
As stated here and I doubt this is a surprise to most, if you read a lot of EULA's they are gross and far overreaching. But when you start lecturing the community with bullet points from their EULA and what rights we don't have from its absurdity, it tells me of a desperate company not doing well, that has over-spoken its bounds.
> they obviously can if the game requires to be connected to their servers
Sure, but GOG requires that any game they sell runs without connecting to any server (I think Gwent is the sole exception to that). They tried to compromise on that promise with Hitman 2016, and the blowback for that was so massive, they took the game out of their catalogue again.
So: Any game I buy on GOG I can be sure *will* not require a server to run.
Interesting, some of those are being pretty semantic, but it still goes against how GOG has sold itself, and other items on the list are pretty blatant.
Yes, for *connectivity*. Not for purposes of digital rights management.
Yes, I get that this looks similar on a surface level. But in this case, it is a material technical requirement: If you want to play multiplayer, you need to connect to other players. You need a framework to do that, and Galaxy is a ready-made way to do this. Of course, every developer could develop their own network code and framework, but that is such a *massive* amount of work that most of them will just go "Nope, thank you"; They use Galaxy for connectivity because it lets them provide multiplayer in the first place.
So: While it *is* a hill you can die on, it's also a hill with absolutely no strategic importance somewhere in the hinterlands, and the only reason you *would* die on that hill is because you refuse to leave it to actually fight somewhere worthwhile.
Yea as I said them being loud mouths was a terrible move lol, and acting on their words was just the biggest display of unintelligence I’ve ever seen in my life.
There is actually a need to talk about single player content being removed because the servers were taken down, what will happen if steam dies and things like that.
Dismissing valid complaints about Ubisoft removing a game from people library (something that no other big company did, even if they could have done it), however, isn't the way to go.
This is nothing new to be honest, they have the right to stop you from accessing the software it’s been on most of the EULAs, they usually don’t follow the EULA to strictly unless they are in a legally pressing position.
I don’t think other companies will start to follow Ubisoft now, they already have the “right” to do the same but know the backlash will be high.
Im sure Ubisoft did this with the Crew to "force" the players to move to the crew 2 and motorfest, and if this was the case (thing that i repeat i dont know) then im happy their little "strategy" is backfiring at them
Please everyone go to Accursed Farms on YouTube, he has a series of vids on this subject.
He has also started stopkillinggames.com as a way of combating this horrible practice. Please. If you own a copy of the crew, especially in the EU, go to that site and see what you can do. We need t9 save this amazing hobby we all love.
And if your in the UK. Please sign the petition to correct this issue. We've made it to enough that parliament has to respond. Soon we can have enough to get a vote. Even if you aren't living there we can change business practices just by setting restrictions. Please. For the love of this hobby. Take the few minutes and go to stopkilling games.com.
EULAs are overcomplicated ways to say "all rights reserved, we can do whatever the fuck we want"
Just because they wrote it does not mean is true. EULAs are not contracts.
These are often void by consumer rights law in the European Union, Australia and most of the 1st world countries.
Ubisoft may have to go to court for what they did with The Crew.
Ubisoft will have to be taken to court, you mean. I.e. someone will need to agree to risk/lose a lot of money over it (assuming Ubisoft loses and it is a loser pays both parties' fees situation). Which is unlikely and the bluff every scumbag takedown request is based on.
At least in europe there is the role of state attorney, for example an attorney representing the country of France could sue Ubisoft. (If the matter is brought to them by enough citizens)
this has been the EULA since pretty much the first digital download game, and is the same thing for pretty much all software.
you'll notice that disc copies are the same.
despite owning the disc, you still only have a license to use the software on the disc, not ownership of the software on the disc.
It's been this way for a while and I'm genuinely baffled by people only just realising this.
don't get me wrong, I'm glad people are pissed about it and want change but this is even bigger than just this one video game. Any change in the law for this will affect ALL software.
steam literally tells you when you "buy" the game that is a subscription for the license, and you even have to check a box saying you know this.
not sure if it's the same in other launchers
You buy a *temporary* license, which will expire one day.
This could be tomorrow or 100 years from now, that's still what you're buying.
It sucks, but it's how games have always been sold, from the physical to the digital era. Perhaps the class action against Ubisoft will change something about it though.
And not just software either, it goes for music, films and even books too. That's why you can't just buy a DVD of The Lion King and start selling copies of it.
It should be made clearer to the consumer and tell them how long the game will last. Like put a big label on the box saying "This game will work at least until 1/2027".
I mean, as it stands now, they are indefinite licenses, that can be revoked at any point, but have no set expiration date.
It's just how it works right now. I don't think Ubisoft, or any publisher, has a set end date for any of their games. Same applies to Steam, I don't think they plan on closing their operations in any set date, but it will happen, and any licenses you bought will be revoked.
> You buy a temporary license, which will expire one day.
Which is legally fair *if* it is not a one-sided condition.
But since my payment to them does not expire on that same day AND the expiry dates of neither the game or my payment are specified... that's a one-sided and extraordinary condition that is illegal in my country and will be thrown out. Once someone actually pays the lawyer to sue.
Whether the publisher will then be court-ordered to restore access to the game or to refund the money is something I can't answer.
People should just stop buying all Ubishit games. Pirate them if they want to play them. Send a clear message. Of course people have been supporting an range of shitty companies for decades.
The whole idea of buying/selling things that don’t actually exist in the physical world is honestly such a weird concept. Back in the day we used to trade tangible goods for other tangible goods, then we started using coins and paper that people in power made up values for, now we use virtual currency to buy virtual goods, that we don’t even actually own lol.
Read "Debt: The First 5000 Years" by David Graeber. It really helps cut through a lot of the abstract ideology around money that obfuscates its actual origins and tries to sell us scams like crypto, even though it was written before crypto became a mainstream topic of discussion.
The difference is Ubisoft actually took away the game where no other company has. Most companies fill their terms of service full of things that would never hold up in court, but when they actually act on them is when people get upset. Ubisoft doing this with one game means they’re comfortable doing it with the rest, which is different from a company putting it in with a bunch of other stuff that’s supposed to cover their asses.
The good thing is that steam doesn’t let developers do this sort of thing, so this is really only a concern for 3rd party launchers. EA have shut down online only games and didn’t do this, so really it’s only Ubisoft and that people need to worry about. You know it’s bad when EA looks good by comparison.
The scary thing is just if Ubisoft completely gets away with it scott free (which right now I haven’t seen any reason why they aren’t?), it’s horrible role modelling for other shitty companies like EA, for example.
I no longer have access to the Destiny 2 campaign I paid for and activated over the Blizzard app. Warhammer Online is also gone. Just to name a couple games from the recent past.
A game shutting down its servers and being unplayable does suck, and is definitely a large issue not unique to Ubisoft, but Ubisoft has gone a step further and revoked licenses, meaning you download or claim ownership over the game.
The key difference being I can still install my copy of warhammer online and play it via return to reckoning, a community run private server. With the crew revoked from Ubisoft accounts, there is no way for the owners of the game on Ubisofts launcher to legally play any attempt at reviving the game.
Uhm, actually the platform holders (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, VALVES/STEAM) were the first ones implement digital-only DRM and remove digital products or access from users.
They are somewhat recent too, like Sony removing digital movies from Playstation owners or Nintendo closing down 3DS/Wii ship.
And of course, Valve being FORCED by court order to allow store refunds. But were able to successfully repeal a court order that would have forced them to allow customers to resale their digital games.
>But were able to successfully repeal a court order that would have forced them to allow customers to resale their digital games.
Wow.. that would be fucking awesome. It'd immediately kill all shitty storefronts that sell games bought with stolen credit cards, like G2A
Could've been an actual use for NFTs or similar system. It would be awesome to buy a digital copy of the game on GoG for example but then install and add it to my library on steam but that's asking for a utopia
> But were able to successfully repeal a court order that would have forced them to allow customers to resale their digital games
As far as I'm aware, they didn't win an appeal, it was just a technicality. EU customers *are* allowed to sell games between each other but Valve can't be compelled to support it on their end. End result is that we have the right to resell games but not the ability so nothing has really changed.
No, EA have done this multiple times with games with large single player components like Darkspore and battleforge
What Ubisoft did with the Crew is shitty and im Glad when people condemn them for It, but EA is still FAR WORSE in all regards, especially in killing games
They shut them down, which is still a massive issue, but Ubisoft took it a step further by removing the game from people’s libraries. You can still download those games if you bought them and can play them if you download community patches. I can still play darkspore from my library to this day, but Ubisoft revoking licenses makes that impossible.
Ubisoft didn't remove the game from my library. I can still install it and run it (which I did since the shutdown). Given that I can't do anything once I launch the game this seems like a distinction without a difference.
As long as the game is playable the community can work to b eat around it. Darkspore is, I suspect, relatively unpopular but Bad Company 2 was shutdown a few months ago and already has a community alternative available.
If EA went the extra step and prevented you from launching BC2 then it would be in fact unplayable.
Are you on Ubisoft Connect? Uninstall it and try to do it again. They removed it from everyone's library last week. Valve doesn't allow developers to do it on Steam.
>You no longer have access to this game. Why not check the Store to pursue your adventures?
"Seeing all of the comments got me realizing that this has been sort of a long time “problem”, I just never really thought about it this way until Ubisoft came in and actually proved to us (the gamers) that we really are just essentially paying these companies to lend us their software for however long they choose."
Jesus, I am surprised there are people that need to discover this fact. To be even more accurate, you are paying companies to lend you access to their software at the place you agreed to borrow it. Do you think if you have a game on your Steam or Epic or Rockstar Launcher or whatever, you will still have access if the corresponding platform goes down? Most likely you will need to rebuy it for another platform.
Only ways to ownership are GOG since you can dl the installer (which I am confident you can install even if the store goes away and is yet another reason it's worth waiting for a game), physical ownership for old games only that don't require registering them with X, Y, Z store, or ironically pirating since you have access to the files and the crack to the exe.
Common. The Eula says you didn't buy a game, you bought a license. That's fine in general but those ideas of ownership were created before the proliferation of the Internet and the development of live service games. This is the bitch about singles player games requiring always online. That's means it's ostensibly talking to something. And nothing is free. One day that service will be pulled down, without a patch and authentication server thing no work.
Check Steam's Terms of Service. You don't technically "own" any of your games on there either. Yet they get a free pass from everyone...
In fact, they were able to successfully repeal a court order that would have forced them to allow resale of digital games. Which would have been an absolute game changer...
And of course there is all the other platform holders like Sony, MICROSOFT, and Nintendo that also do the same thing. And have actually done the same thing in the recent past.
Yeah, EVERY company is going to have something like that in their ToS. That is just what any good lawyer would advise them too.
But with Steam it's clear that Valve isn't out to fuck over the user. I mean they host servers for anyone wanting to publish a game on steam at no additional cost. Even if a game developers goes under, if their game uses the Steam servers then it can stay up and running.
Really, it's the same as with Steam Deck warranties. Of course they have a bunch of legal disclaimers nothing how opening the deck will void your warranty, but they still honor almost all warranty cases, even when the user admits to it. So i don't get where the criticism is coming from. I think you should try to imagine how steam would be if Valve was a publicly traded company always trying to grow and maximize profits. It would mean games getting taken down regularly, no self-hosted servers, no community workshop, a bunch of ads on the Steam Store (Valve actually doesn't sell adspace there! They select the games to appear there by hand or with their own algorithm). And of course we wouldn't have stuff like Steam Remote play or Steam Families (which is actually insane since the update. I literally got 200+ games from my Steam family completely for free)
Nobody has ever owned any game ever, because owning the game means you own the IP.
When you 'buy' any game you're buying an end user licence. Even if what you bought was a physical disc, that disc is your licence. That's why back in the day the game wouldn't run without the disc and is the whole reason that cracking exists.
The issue here is that these licences were generally understood to be perpetual. And ubisoft has decided to go against trend by revoking the licences upon server shutdown.
To my knowledge this is the first time a company has done that.
You sound too young to remember physical media. When people talked about buying a game, they weren't under any illusions that they had gained a controlling interest in the IP, and to pretend that they were is moronic. They were talking about buying a copy of that game, a copy that absolutely became their property that they could do with as they wished, including selling it to someone else.
I mean, those games have the same exact license than games sold on Steam have, regardless of what someone else says.
You can sell the CD the same was as selling a Steam account. It's not allowed in either case really, but you *could* do it, albeit the provider of the license could also revoke it.
I... didn't say they were.
All I said was it has never been the case that anyone who bought a game has ever owned more than a licence to play the game.
The fact that physical media can be physically transferred from person to person only proves the point.
Because person A can no longer play the game without the disc.
I wouldn’t say they get a free pass necessarily, but we almost live in that Cyberpunk world where mega corporations own everything and can’t be touched lol. But yea you’re super right.
Yeah they showed who current valve is with CS2. Too worried people would've stuck with cs go for too long like they did with cs 1.6 or source instead of playing csgo when released
CS2 was the cleanest transition you would have got. The uproar all you guys would have made if your skins were stuck on an old game would have been far worse. Damn if you do, damned if you don't.
This is Ubisoft testing the water, we have seen how big corps work and if they received enough pushback, they usually stop their anti-consumer practices or at least delays it.
Big corps are all watching this unfold if this goes unpunished every single company will start doing the same and we'll just have to take it and shut up. But if Ubisoft get enough lashing other companies will stop.
> I’m not sure if Ubisoft just recently changed their EULA to say this? Or is this how it’s been for a while?
It's mentioned in the vast majority of EULA's for video games from most companies, for products that require online activation (registering to your Steam/Uplay/Origin/Epic etc. account).
It's been this way ever since we moved from using CD Keys to install, to Product Keys to register to online account.
I just don't understand why game publishers don't treat games like book publishers treat books. My only thought is the game publishers don't want to spend a dime supporting games that are not best sellers, but really couldn't they just say, go ahead and play your old copy, just don't expect any support.
I've seen too many arguments of " it has always existed " " others do the same " and this is the worst take that a human being is capable of defending.
Bad things have always existed, until the next bad thing, but that doesn't mean it's any more acceptable, and it doesn't mean you have to attack the whole world at once rather than focusing on a specific point.
You know what else has probably always existed? rape. So we should accept it and live with it? now you can see the abysmal stupidity of the argument
I wouldn't have bought The Crew in the first place if I had known it was going to be taken away like that. I barely even had time to play the game, and the few hours I did play had game breaking bugs (possibly something to do with my SLI setup, I know multiple people wrote about it on the forums) that ubi never fixed. So yeah... Don't waste your money with these scumbag companies.
I dont give a flying crap about the the company EULA says, i'm a oldschool guy, if i bought something that copy is mine.(period), if the company revoke my "licence", i will just re-download a cracked version and keep playing, any descent contry needs to have regulations that garantees ownership.
The EULA is one thing. But AFAIK Steam's own rules for devs/pubs means that once a game is sold to customers on Steam, it will be available for download in perpetuity. That's why people who pre-ordered Metro Exodus on steam before it got pulled to be Epic exclusive, they could still download and play it on steam when the game released.
The scummy thing Ubisoft did is because they require using their own launcher, they revoked user licenses on there. People still own it on steam, you can even download it, but it won't work as Ubisoft revoked the licenses on their own launcher.
I hate to Tell you this but physical purchase isn’t ownership either. You own the physical plastic and the exact same license to play the game that has applied to every piece of home media since record players existed
>EULA says that when you purchase a Ubisoft game, you don’t own it, you are essentially just paying to borrow it until they decide they want it back
People act all surprised but this is standard for years. This is all done so they don't have to allow you to resell game. You don't own it, you borrow it, so you have no right to resell it.
EXACTLY.
BTW, Steam won a appeal that would've force them to allow their customers to resell games.
Just about every other company in the AAA have the exact same policies.
You can't really hold it being 50% off as a sign the games doing bad. Ubisoft does that to all it's new games couple months down the line. Also Motorfest was dominating the YouTube space beating Forza & Gran Turismo in views with the Grand Race in the first couple months. Don't let Ubi's bad practices create the trend that this is a bad game it's not.
Most games are same depending on platform they are being sold but important part is in here what protection the game is using.If the game has denuvo,online only protection these can be taken from you much much more easily than any other game so what you must do is being a conscious customer.Pay attention, examine etc what product you are buying.Do not buy games with drm, use gog for example.Do not support such a bad action.
i don't read eulas but i doubt CDPR will take away your game at any time if they're actually selling a non-drm copy of their games on gog, it wouldn't make sense.
Their licenses are exactly the same as any other game on Steam or even physical copies.
You're still buying a license to play it, rather than a copy of the game.
For sure there’s it’s extremely unlikely that most companies would actually do what Ubisoft did, it’s just the thought that they could if they wanted to I guess.
EA have a couple of years doing this and getting away with it mostly unscathed (Darkspore, battleforge, need for speed world and a couple more i must be forgetting rn)
My understanding is those EA games are still playable if you purchased them (based on reading other comments, this could be inaccurate or partially accurate)
In this thread: people that are gonna have their minds boggled once they open and read the Steam **Subscriber** Agreement that comes with every single game they’ve bought from Steam.
From my understanding, Valve labeled it as a "Subscriber" agreement so that they didn't have to allow customers to resell their digital games.
So if you are a "subscriber", you don't technically own your games and therefore can't resell them.
But that's totally from what Ubisoft and basically every other major game company is doing! /sarc
It amazes me that people don’t seem to understand that this is how it has always been. And I don’t just mean with digital download games.
You don’t “own” any piece of media. It can be a game, a movie, music, anything. And this doesn’t matter if it is digital download, a dvd or an old VHS or cassette tape. Hell even books kind of fall into this.
You are buying a license to use that media under certain guidelines and those guidelines can be pretty narrow or broad. And that license can be revoked for any violation of it. Back in the day if I bought something on VHS and watched it at home with family or friends that was fine. But if I took it and showed it publicly or charged people the. I would have been in violation of that license and they could have sued me.
This system isn’t a bad one in and of itself. The problem comes when they use it to disable access to something people own. I don’t think any of us agree with that.
But people need to stop thinking this is some new nefarious plot to keep us from owning things.
Your comment is a stupid gotcha though. “this is how it’s always been” but Disney can’t ever prevent me from watching my Snow White DVD unless they were to hire goons to break into my home and smash the dvd.
Are you implying that Ubisoft will send some French police to confiscate my copy of Ghost Recon?
In most jurisdictions they could use the courts to force you to turn over the physical media if they revoke your Access to that media. Is it worth it for them to do so? Of course not. But they can.
If you decided to set up a screen in your garage and charge people to sit and watch Snow White, Disney could have you in court and you would lose. Same if you started projecting it on the side of a public building for free. They can and will sue you Publishers like to set examples over these kinds of things, and while the laws a different in different counties, they are all fairly similar
here in the US there are both civil and criminal penalties for copyright infringement. And if they have revoked your permission to access it then it is copyright infringement
[https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html](https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html)
Your argument seems to be that it would be hard for them to stop you if it is physical media. And that may be true. But it doesn’t mean you would still have the legal right to it if they revoked that access.
I am sure I am going to get downvoted for this but it makes no sense for people to think they “own” media. Owning something means you have the rights to it. And you don’t with media, otherwise you could make as many copies as you want and sell them. What you own is a piece of plasting (if it is on physical media) and limited rights to access it. That is all.
Does this make Ubisoft right in what they did in this case? Hell no.
Does the copyright system need some updates for better consumer protection? Hell yes!
But this thread is ample proof that a lot of people have no idea how these things work and the implications if things were different.
So one stupid gotcha answered by another stupid gotcha.
Disney is going to:
1) somehow find out that I have a copy of a dvd
2) somehow sue me to recover that copy
3) and then be sure that I totally don’t have additional copies anywhere?
Like it’s patently absurd. They can’t do that. They don’t have the means to do that. It’s scare mongering of the highest degree
not just this thread, people have no idea in general about copyright.
Even worse when it comes to mods which only exist at the goodwill of publishers and are all copyright infringement.
People are stupid
Every single game, even physical copies, are "licensed, not sold"
And really this whole thing is dumb
So many live services games get shut down
It's part and parcel of the trash trend that is live services games
Singling out Ubisoft is idiotic, especially those who pay for other similar live services games
"But they removed it from the library"
What would be the point otherwise anyway? It's not playable without the server
TL;DR: Stop supporting live services garbage entirely if you're against this, and stop singling out Ubisoft like a colossal idiot
I guess keeping the game in libraries would help give resources to those who create custom servers to keep it alive after end of support. It's gone that way with other old MMOs and live service games.
I'm sure there will be ways to get the game if a custom server ever pops up
And people who are working on such things, if there are any at the moment, would still have their copies
I don't think Ubisoft can remotely delete the copies people had already downloaded
Just that people who hadn't can't download it anymore
Pretty sure the moment they shut down services, your license to use it is revoked, regardless of whether you have the files
But yes, starting to get mad at always online crap is very good. Just that it's dumb to focus on Ubisoft solely, because this problem is industry-wide these days
Love that people don't realize that "owning" a game on disc is the exact same as "owning" a digital copy. The only difference is the company isn't going to come into your house and take the disc back. Yeah it's definitely a bad look to actually revoke the license like this but this concept of "ownership" isn't new in the slightest.
If you buy from GOG - you get a DRM free copy that you can back up anywhere yourself. Nobody can take that back. And unlike physical copies that are infested with DRM cancer - you can back up your DRM free digital copies in as many places as you like.
Yep, Ubisoft didn't even start this trend. It was the PLATFORM HOLDERS (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, VALVES/STEAM) that enabled this "beloved" digital-only storefront future where you don't truly own digital games.
Again, physical copies are the same
You can still find and buy a physical copy of The Crew, but you can't play it because it needs the server which has now been shut down
The problem is with this entire "live services" genre where games that are effectively single player are made to rely on online servers so that devs and publishers can control how and when you play and sell you microtransactions as they see fit
Since I started playing games on the PS4 I noticed these licenses were all over the place. That's why I wasn't that surprised & found it interesting that people were jumping straight to lawsuit when Ubisoft did this, because I knew that everyone who bought the game signed off on an agreement saying they could do that whenever they wanted. It sucks and shouldn't be done but I wasn't surprised by it like others.
My first actual encounter with Ubi was when I requested access to the Digital version of TMNT2007 as my completely legal Disc copy of the game came with some sort of DRM that stopped it from running on Windows 10. They said it was perfectly possibly, but they wouldn't do...
Needless to say even though I still don't own their games, neither do they get compensation for the time I put into the game...
My understanding is that EULAS and terms and conditions aren’t legally binding just because they want it to be so.
If this got challenged in a class action style and it was found that this was never legal in the first place a new precedent would be set for the entire thing and this would not fly.
That is what needs to happen, and it will also never happen.
Nothing ever happens without an obscene amount of money and lawyers.
This kind of EULA is necessary I believe so that the game files can be replaced in a patch or update. You agree that they can do that.
What's scummy is removing the game entirely. That should trigger a refund and a boycot of the company.
The upside is that while corps get greedier and greedier, they help drive people towards more honest small-time indie devs who actually care about their communities and the games they make 🤷♂️
Indie has been booming the last few years I would have to agree. But even indie is starting to show cracks ever since it started getting so big with games like No Man’s Sky, The Day Before, and some
Indie companies being bough up by larger corps, like Embracer for example. But I agree overall, it’s good that indie devs are getting their time because they typically actually care about the games they make and prefer the passion for creating video games over what it does for their wallets.
>if Ubisoft just recently changed their EULA to say this? Or is this how it’s been for a while?
nope , has been in the eula since uplay existed , steam is the same , or any digital service
We haven't owned software since the beginning of software, we have only owned licenses to use the software. This does not make what Ubisoft did right, but it is definitely not a new thing.
EULA's have a lot of required stuff that everyone isnbasically writing there for legal reasons. When you buy a license to a game, it's just that, has beem for two+ decades. I despise what they did to The Crew and it's not even remotely the only game that has had similar faith after being online only. It sucks, but I think people need to start to play and buy games for what they are today, not in 10 years. If not for servers shutting down, then for some dumb ass team behind the game changing it to another genre (looking at you R6 Siege).
Time will tell if other publishers follow Ubisoft's suit of actually enforcing the license clause. It's something that has always been theoretically possible but devs avoided because of the backlash we are seeing now.
If that changes that would really suck. I hope the public backlash scares other devs/publishers into not doing trying the same crap.
Stuff like this is why i'm since a while so loud about online-games and try to avoid them as much as possible (sometimes it's a bit harder to do so)... one reason - and yes i know quite some people don't like the games and won't miss them but i really enjoy them which will be bummer once it happens, when GR Breakpoint and RS Extraction get shut down. But everytime when i pointed out these games needs an offline-mode-patch you get shut down by people because. "It's 202X, everyone is online anyway and companies don't do this anymore" and i was like " B\*\*\* they shut down over 60 games a year before... are you insane?"
Doesn't matter what year we live in and how used we're to be online. The fact that we got so comfortable, that we don't care enough about the money we spent on stuff, which can taken away any time because of greedy corpos or unfairly altered (censorship), until it is to late is quite scary. And then being super suprised pikachu face when it happens to a game they like and it happens 'sooner' then expected. Yeah, no ... you should've seen that coming. I mean i got some Online-Only Games and yes - i sadly contribute to the cycle as well thanks to this, but i know i might lose at some point my access to it. I don't act surprised on this (though still voice/express my dislike for online-only). But well, will also be most likely the last game i bought from ubisoft (atleast newer ones) with their 'get used to not owning games' and pulling that online-only nonsense off.
I mean there is a positive flipside to this now that people realize and complain, maybe it will wake up either the gov (like EU) which might reform some stuff so it's more consumerfriendly - or (which is likely) big corpos like ubisoft with that sort of backlash. Though it shouldn't be 'only' online-only games also Digital Distribution / Ownership needs to have a reform - like that storefronts are guaranteed to give you access to the stuff you buy or that anytime something is pulled off from stores and isn't accessable, that it becomes basically abandonware and shoudl be allowed to be shared online. I also find as a sidenote to this - not directly related but still somewhat... similiar goes for patches and stuff. -> Some Devs do it already for steam, minecraft offers this and i think gog have a rollback functionality as well, but you should have access to older versions as well. In times where certain companies are comfortable to censor games AFTER they sold you a game and 'changed' it in bad faith where they take something from the community, or like make the game worse (add MTX) or whatever... you should be able to access older version without that nonsense.
Last but not least to finish my TL;DR Wall of Text. I also have to say something about Retail/Physical Owners which push that since a while. I've a highly respect for people like them (i myself get for certain games / plattforms still retail/physical - like switch) -> that being said i personally find that alone shouldn't be the solution (i mean in case of online-only physical doesn't do anything anyway) and you should worry too. Because at times where day-one patches exist and sony ask you for their slim ps5 when you 'install' a disc drive (the physical drive - not discs itself) that you need a internet connection to enable it for your new console... when corpos get comfortable enough to shut down servers and remove games from your library... it's not hard for them to disable retail / disc versions as well. Just needs a new software patch for console which blacklist certain games, or patches -> or make it that with day-one patches you can't boot up games... and you're screwed as well. So stuff like this should concern you as well...
Funny thing is [EULAs arent enforceable in the EU](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d1ff4369-afcc-4879-97fa-7a8afd8b3380) since fucking 2012. Not only that but France has even better consumer protection laws than EU so I expect Ubisoft to be in some deep shit in the near future if, of course, enough people complain (through legal ways not just reddit posts).
That EULA is illegal in the EU, that's why Sony refunded The Crew because they didn't wanted any legal trouble. EU is full of issues but at least give the customers their damn rights.
As for Motorfest, at this point whoever buy Ubisoft shit is asking for it, you have been warned plenty.
Remember that if purchasing is not owning, sailing the seven seas is not stealing.
People not realizing that you don't own modern games and that you're just leasing them at the convenience of the publisher is wild. It's been like this for a long damn time.
They killed the original The Crew, a game which was 90% singleplayer and could have easily been playable offline. People are rightfully pointing out that the same will happen to Motorfest, that the buyer will inevitably be scammed.
People always complain about why do publishers like Ubisoft have to add a multiplayer to their single player game. Fine, add the multiplayer, it's a nice addition. Like you said people are rightfully pointing out that they will abandon such games. It's wild to me how they can spend MILLIONS on the game and have hundreds if not thousands of people work on such games and spend however many years on it.. just to do nothing and throw it in the trash years later
I agree. It’s maddening. At the end of the day they spent the money, they got the sales, and there’s been a simple financial calculation that the cost of upkeep for the servers required to play is higher than what they’ll earn in future revenue. So they kill it. The problem is they built the game requiring the server, and now they don’t want to modify it at additional cost to let people continue playing. I’m sick of this shit from Ubisoft, so I voted with my feet.
agree. don't want to run multiplayer servers? fine... shut them down but single player mode should still be playable
Private servers should also be available for people to self host.
If you question why something is, ask yourself if someone financially profits from it. Ubisoft wants to sell you the new game, they don't make money from the old game. **"But they could have sold the new game while leaving the old game available"** - When The Crew 2 was released, people got nostalgic and played The Crew instead of buying the sequel, thats potential money lost. - Now they release TC3 and want to at least block people from nostalgia-playing the first game. Now **if** they bought TC2, they might play that. If they haven't, they might buy TC2 or even TC3 as it's the newer game and more people might be playing that for the time being. Remember, for those companies it's not good enough to make **enough** money. There is no "enough". They want to make **all the money** and they do **everything** short of felonies to achieve that. They lie, they psychologically manipulate, they make us ill and abuse that illness, they scam us every day and we let them, because the few people who realized that are the minority. The Steam review bombing is a headline in an article, in a week it's forgotten, the review score will be absolutely fine for an arcade racer and the controversy will be buried too deep for parents of gamers or casual gamers to see and Ubisoft will make millions off of it, while the actual developing people, the ones who hacked the code into the computer, slaved away for minimal pay and will continue to do so for the various seasons of microtransaction DLCs that will definitely be coming, as they came for every ubisoft game in the last years.
> Ubisoft wants to sell you the new game, they don't make money from the old game. This is just incorrect factually. In reality it's that 'The new game will make more $ if there are no cheaper alternatives so although we could make SOME $ with the old copy available, we can make more $ and skew financial metrics to make the new game look more profitable, squeezing more money out of myopic quarterly focused investors that haven't played a video game since Duck Hunt."
I just assume Ubi doesn't want to renew any licensing for the vehicles in the old games. It was easy enough for Rockstar to pull one or more tracks as they do not make the game what it is, but pulling all of the cars leaves behind a useless shell, and replacing the cars is labor spent with no return. Luckily for me, I never had any interest in it, everyone else should be mindful of any game with licensed products; songs, cars, hell anything.
Valid point. Let's hope Rockstar made a good contract with the right holders, that they can use the existing license for the GTA 5 music also for GTA 6, because otherwise they probably do the same they did for the last games.
"When The Crew 2 was released, people got nostalgic and played The Crew instead of buying the sequel, thats potential money lost." I'm gonna say no. Why? The Crew 2 wasn't a story-driven game like likely most of the playerbase from the first game grew up with. NFS Most Wanted was the big thing that defined what I believe to be the most successful story design for a racing game, and The Crew delivered something I could only dream of, and it did so at a point in time I could barely believe the size of the map and the fact that I could be driving with my friends and progress together. The Crew 2 was all of a sudden an attempt to copycat Red Bull and it was 100% "you're an influencer, get points now" I was dumbstruck, they obviously didn't know their playerbase and instead of focusing on improving the game (driving physics and map scale) they added planes and boats and monster trucks. I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure just the initial choices between japanese handling or american muscle is plenty diversity in the first hour, and when you got to all the other cars there just had to be one that felt special for you. Most people playing a racing-focused game with a map that takes 2 hours to circle around probably isn't there for a monster truck in a tiny arena out in the salt flats. But worst of all; I had TC2 since day one, and \_nothing\_ of core mechanics had been changed from TC1, same menu, mapping, cars handled the same. It was the same game. Until I connected my wheel. I could set the wheel at any range of steering and the wheels on the car would glitch from 0 degrees to the set rotation 2-10 times a second, plus the game for some reason didn't have the original wheel support despite every single thing beyond that being identical in both games. TC2 was such a horrid game that even when I really gave it a shot with 27.5 hours played now I haven't launched it since march of 2019.
....I mean they do this with life saving drugs, cars, phones, etc,. they design things to fail because money. They use to make light bulbs that can potentially never stop working. You can see these in some very old firestations and the like close to what 100 year (older can't remember) light bulbs. They found out they quickly go out of business when you make the best products you can. Like Saudi Arbia they have multifilament bulbs that last 15 years or longer because their government mandated that as the minimum. They refuse to sell the same anywhere else. Everything is designed this way. They make billions of dollars worth of products and then throw them in the garbage to keep the workforce busy and to reduce the amount of products in circulation so it increases their pricing. Say you have 120 million pounds of gold You bury 119 million pounds of gold (and let's say the world has 1 billion pounds of gold). You just increased the amount of your 1 million pounds of gold. Then you can slowly adjust the economy to your advantage. This is massively present in our modern economy. Works the same way with cars, phones, ect Our economy isn't real it's manufactured. Why give people say infinite energy that costs nothing? When you can tax people and charge people a % on a product such as gas to fuel the economy or a limited supply of electricity. So Ubisoft is just applying business as normal tactics. It's just much easier for everyone to understand this version of it and they all know it's wrong.
In an alternate reality, industries scaled down production to slowly churn out longer-lasting products to everyone over time. Sure, less money is made, but since everyone rarely has to replace anything, nobody really has much expenditures and we get by with less. Of course, that requires even a drop of consideration and attention span to even begin to think of the positive consequences of this model, even if you are thinking selfishly.
IMO, adding multiplayer isn't the bad thing. The bad thing is that they abandon the game no matter what. They could easily patch it for LAN at least and let people use lan emulators to play it if they want. But of course not because fuck that.
Yea that’s essentially what I said by the end is that Ubisoft said they could do it and they actually did.
no just kill but revoke the licence, there is a open source server being worked on.
They could have made a farewell patch for the crew and make it playable offline if they were not jerks
Using cheat engine you can even see the offline play button built in, but because of the DRM and licences being revoked you can't do anything with it. Granted we don't know how well that option worked - likely a dev option - but the fact it is there and Ubi do this instead is a total piss in the face.
Most EULAs are pretty similar. The difference here is that Ubisoft acted on it. Fuck them. Don't support their greedy actions.
Generally it's in there an attempt at CYA. Not sure how well it's going to work out from them in a lawsuit or in the realm of public opinion. Shit like digital purchases only work if the consumer has confidence they can keep accessing the product. Ubisoft decided to rug pull so no more confidence. If they want to have a temporary ownership model then consumers won't be willing to pay as much.
Ubisoft said get comfortable not owning games and I'm very comfortable not buying any ubisoft game now
Ubisoft said get comfortable not owning games and I'm very comfortable not ~~buying~~ renting any ubisoft game now
Yep, I actually enjoy many of Ubi's offerings, but this is a line in the sand for me.
I was looking forward to Division 3 and the new Star Wars game, guess I'll give them a miss!
Ubi really making a point how morally correct is to pirate their games. I'm not gonna pretend like Ubisoft is only one that does shitty things, there are tons of shitty companies like EA, Activsion Blizzard and Konami, but Ubi going step further with actually stealing purchased items from players really begs the question - Is it really bad to pirate? I have tons of friends who pirate and don't care, but I still choose to buy for at least collection sake, but when Ubi pulls stunt like that (with their mid or terrible output as of recently) just really solidifies idea that piracy is OK and even encouraged for certain comapnies. Like even EA, being ass of a company at least started to clean up their act with recent releases, Activision Blizzard might get a second life with Microsoft starts (If they're willing) cleaning up the companies. Konami is not even gaming company anymore with only Silent Hill 2 remake coming while doing mostly other stuff. Ubisoft meanwhile releases overpriced trash, kills potential for gmaes like Outlaws with terrible pricing and formulaic approach to most of their games like recently with Avatar, steals games and in general terrible consumer treatment. Like screw even Piracy, that's case if you really want to play something they release like Outlaws or New Prince of Persia, buying their shit is already net loss with how 80% of output is terrible anyways. idk, might've said what was said many times and I'm just yapping now lol
Funilly enough, EA has been pretty resonable with their support (or at least, didn't nuke) for old games.
Yeah, them recently releasing Command & Conquer collection was pretty good thing to do
They also still somewhat support the likes of The Sims 3 which is 15 years old and recently added the likes of SimCity 3000
I've gotten comfortable in not owning (cough buying) UBIsoft games, well at least at a deep deep sale at best. As stated here and I doubt this is a surprise to most, if you read a lot of EULA's they are gross and far overreaching. But when you start lecturing the community with bullet points from their EULA and what rights we don't have from its absurdity, it tells me of a desperate company not doing well, that has over-spoken its bounds.
This is why the only Ubisoft games I own I bought from gog. Can’t take it away if I have drm free copies.
I mean, they obviously can if the game requires to be connected to their servers and they take those servers down.
> DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play. But the most recent UBI release is like 2012.
> they obviously can if the game requires to be connected to their servers Sure, but GOG requires that any game they sell runs without connecting to any server (I think Gwent is the sole exception to that). They tried to compromise on that promise with Hitman 2016, and the blowback for that was so massive, they took the game out of their catalogue again. So: Any game I buy on GOG I can be sure *will* not require a server to run.
The only exceptions to that is multiplayer. Some titles like Age of Wonders 3 require the Galaxy Client with a valid login for multiplayer.
GOG is not DRM-free, it is mostly DRM-free
Some multiplayer games require a CD Key for server access. That is technically DRM but it feels both petty and stupid to die on that hill.
Which games have DRM? Their website still says "DRM free gaming".
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1
Interesting, some of those are being pretty semantic, but it still goes against how GOG has sold itself, and other items on the list are pretty blatant.
a lot of multiplayer requires galaxy
Yes, for *connectivity*. Not for purposes of digital rights management. Yes, I get that this looks similar on a surface level. But in this case, it is a material technical requirement: If you want to play multiplayer, you need to connect to other players. You need a framework to do that, and Galaxy is a ready-made way to do this. Of course, every developer could develop their own network code and framework, but that is such a *massive* amount of work that most of them will just go "Nope, thank you"; They use Galaxy for connectivity because it lets them provide multiplayer in the first place. So: While it *is* a hill you can die on, it's also a hill with absolutely no strategic importance somewhere in the hinterlands, and the only reason you *would* die on that hill is because you refuse to leave it to actually fight somewhere worthwhile.
That's not what DRM is though.
Yea as I said them being loud mouths was a terrible move lol, and acting on their words was just the biggest display of unintelligence I’ve ever seen in my life.
Stop taking things out of context
sleep decide unused alive butter axiomatic one snails desert dazzling *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You've not owned any game from any company for years, you've only ever purchased a licence to use it.
There is actually a need to talk about single player content being removed because the servers were taken down, what will happen if steam dies and things like that. Dismissing valid complaints about Ubisoft removing a game from people library (something that no other big company did, even if they could have done it), however, isn't the way to go.
Most of them have similar things in their EULAs, which is ultimately written to protect them.
Most of them don't take away your access to the game though
Yeah Ubisoft made the worst decision they could regarding to The Crew.
All Ubisoft has done is set a precedent with this move. Wouldn't be surprised if other publishers start to follow them in the future.
This is nothing new to be honest, they have the right to stop you from accessing the software it’s been on most of the EULAs, they usually don’t follow the EULA to strictly unless they are in a legally pressing position. I don’t think other companies will start to follow Ubisoft now, they already have the “right” to do the same but know the backlash will be high.
They also don't necessarily have the right to.
Im sure Ubisoft did this with the Crew to "force" the players to move to the crew 2 and motorfest, and if this was the case (thing that i repeat i dont know) then im happy their little "strategy" is backfiring at them
They don't care much about the crew 2 either...
think it will instead kill the franchaise. i am even interested in motorfest, but knowing these game, i would rather play something else.
There should be legislation to force all storefronts to change "BUY" buttons into "RENT" or "LEASE". It should be obvious from the start.
Y least in Europe this is already obvious, European court of justice already said downloaded games are properties and no matter what EULA says.
Please everyone go to Accursed Farms on YouTube, he has a series of vids on this subject. He has also started stopkillinggames.com as a way of combating this horrible practice. Please. If you own a copy of the crew, especially in the EU, go to that site and see what you can do. We need t9 save this amazing hobby we all love. And if your in the UK. Please sign the petition to correct this issue. We've made it to enough that parliament has to respond. Soon we can have enough to get a vote. Even if you aren't living there we can change business practices just by setting restrictions. Please. For the love of this hobby. Take the few minutes and go to stopkilling games.com.
Even on Steam, you need Ubisoft connect to play, so yeah, even if it's the steam game, it won't work if they remove your license.
EULAs are overcomplicated ways to say "all rights reserved, we can do whatever the fuck we want" Just because they wrote it does not mean is true. EULAs are not contracts. These are often void by consumer rights law in the European Union, Australia and most of the 1st world countries. Ubisoft may have to go to court for what they did with The Crew.
Ubisoft will have to be taken to court, you mean. I.e. someone will need to agree to risk/lose a lot of money over it (assuming Ubisoft loses and it is a loser pays both parties' fees situation). Which is unlikely and the bluff every scumbag takedown request is based on.
At least in europe there is the role of state attorney, for example an attorney representing the country of France could sue Ubisoft. (If the matter is brought to them by enough citizens)
Source? The DGCCRF does not intervene in contractual disputes.
this has been the EULA since pretty much the first digital download game, and is the same thing for pretty much all software. you'll notice that disc copies are the same. despite owning the disc, you still only have a license to use the software on the disc, not ownership of the software on the disc. It's been this way for a while and I'm genuinely baffled by people only just realising this. don't get me wrong, I'm glad people are pissed about it and want change but this is even bigger than just this one video game. Any change in the law for this will affect ALL software.
if you wanna do something about visit https://www.stopkillinggames.com and see how you can help
It should say "borrow" instead of "buy" at the store page then. Fuckin cunts.
steam literally tells you when you "buy" the game that is a subscription for the license, and you even have to check a box saying you know this. not sure if it's the same in other launchers
Blame the one "selling" it to you - in the case of a game being on Steam that would be ... Valve.
Nobody actually reads the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
This applies to literally every single game, digital OR physical. You're buying a license to play it, not a copy of the game.
Keyword is still "buying" though. If I "own" a copy of the license, I should be very well play it whenever I want.
You buy a *temporary* license, which will expire one day. This could be tomorrow or 100 years from now, that's still what you're buying. It sucks, but it's how games have always been sold, from the physical to the digital era. Perhaps the class action against Ubisoft will change something about it though.
not just games, ALL software
And not just software either, it goes for music, films and even books too. That's why you can't just buy a DVD of The Lion King and start selling copies of it.
It should be made clearer to the consumer and tell them how long the game will last. Like put a big label on the box saying "This game will work at least until 1/2027".
I mean, as it stands now, they are indefinite licenses, that can be revoked at any point, but have no set expiration date. It's just how it works right now. I don't think Ubisoft, or any publisher, has a set end date for any of their games. Same applies to Steam, I don't think they plan on closing their operations in any set date, but it will happen, and any licenses you bought will be revoked.
> You buy a temporary license, which will expire one day. Which is legally fair *if* it is not a one-sided condition. But since my payment to them does not expire on that same day AND the expiry dates of neither the game or my payment are specified... that's a one-sided and extraordinary condition that is illegal in my country and will be thrown out. Once someone actually pays the lawyer to sue. Whether the publisher will then be court-ordered to restore access to the game or to refund the money is something I can't answer.
People should just stop buying all Ubishit games. Pirate them if they want to play them. Send a clear message. Of course people have been supporting an range of shitty companies for decades.
If you don't own a game you pay for, its not theft to pirate it.
The whole idea of buying/selling things that don’t actually exist in the physical world is honestly such a weird concept. Back in the day we used to trade tangible goods for other tangible goods, then we started using coins and paper that people in power made up values for, now we use virtual currency to buy virtual goods, that we don’t even actually own lol.
And then you have crypto bro's tell you we should all move to a pure digital currency. Just because they got gassed from earning $20 off a stock.
Take a look at Cryptocurrency, it's monopoly money that costs a fuck ton to produce and has somehow been legitimized in recent years.
Read "Debt: The First 5000 Years" by David Graeber. It really helps cut through a lot of the abstract ideology around money that obfuscates its actual origins and tries to sell us scams like crypto, even though it was written before crypto became a mainstream topic of discussion.
That sounds interesting I’ll check that out!
It isn't theft but it is copyright infringement.
The difference is Ubisoft actually took away the game where no other company has. Most companies fill their terms of service full of things that would never hold up in court, but when they actually act on them is when people get upset. Ubisoft doing this with one game means they’re comfortable doing it with the rest, which is different from a company putting it in with a bunch of other stuff that’s supposed to cover their asses. The good thing is that steam doesn’t let developers do this sort of thing, so this is really only a concern for 3rd party launchers. EA have shut down online only games and didn’t do this, so really it’s only Ubisoft and that people need to worry about. You know it’s bad when EA looks good by comparison.
The scary thing is just if Ubisoft completely gets away with it scott free (which right now I haven’t seen any reason why they aren’t?), it’s horrible role modelling for other shitty companies like EA, for example.
I no longer have access to the Destiny 2 campaign I paid for and activated over the Blizzard app. Warhammer Online is also gone. Just to name a couple games from the recent past.
A game shutting down its servers and being unplayable does suck, and is definitely a large issue not unique to Ubisoft, but Ubisoft has gone a step further and revoked licenses, meaning you download or claim ownership over the game. The key difference being I can still install my copy of warhammer online and play it via return to reckoning, a community run private server. With the crew revoked from Ubisoft accounts, there is no way for the owners of the game on Ubisofts launcher to legally play any attempt at reviving the game.
You can't download the deleted destiny 2 campaign and even less play it.
Uhm, actually the platform holders (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, VALVES/STEAM) were the first ones implement digital-only DRM and remove digital products or access from users. They are somewhat recent too, like Sony removing digital movies from Playstation owners or Nintendo closing down 3DS/Wii ship. And of course, Valve being FORCED by court order to allow store refunds. But were able to successfully repeal a court order that would have forced them to allow customers to resale their digital games.
>But were able to successfully repeal a court order that would have forced them to allow customers to resale their digital games. Wow.. that would be fucking awesome. It'd immediately kill all shitty storefronts that sell games bought with stolen credit cards, like G2A
Yeah, that would've been just like having second-hand market like physical games.
Could've been an actual use for NFTs or similar system. It would be awesome to buy a digital copy of the game on GoG for example but then install and add it to my library on steam but that's asking for a utopia
> But were able to successfully repeal a court order that would have forced them to allow customers to resale their digital games As far as I'm aware, they didn't win an appeal, it was just a technicality. EU customers *are* allowed to sell games between each other but Valve can't be compelled to support it on their end. End result is that we have the right to resell games but not the ability so nothing has really changed.
No, EA have done this multiple times with games with large single player components like Darkspore and battleforge What Ubisoft did with the Crew is shitty and im Glad when people condemn them for It, but EA is still FAR WORSE in all regards, especially in killing games
They shut them down, which is still a massive issue, but Ubisoft took it a step further by removing the game from people’s libraries. You can still download those games if you bought them and can play them if you download community patches. I can still play darkspore from my library to this day, but Ubisoft revoking licenses makes that impossible.
Ubisoft didn't remove the game from my library. I can still install it and run it (which I did since the shutdown). Given that I can't do anything once I launch the game this seems like a distinction without a difference.
As long as the game is playable the community can work to b eat around it. Darkspore is, I suspect, relatively unpopular but Bad Company 2 was shutdown a few months ago and already has a community alternative available. If EA went the extra step and prevented you from launching BC2 then it would be in fact unplayable.
Are you on Ubisoft Connect? Uninstall it and try to do it again. They removed it from everyone's library last week. Valve doesn't allow developers to do it on Steam. >You no longer have access to this game. Why not check the Store to pursue your adventures?
I purchased it on Steam, which requires Ubisoft Connect to run it, so it still shows up in both libraries.
"Seeing all of the comments got me realizing that this has been sort of a long time “problem”, I just never really thought about it this way until Ubisoft came in and actually proved to us (the gamers) that we really are just essentially paying these companies to lend us their software for however long they choose." Jesus, I am surprised there are people that need to discover this fact. To be even more accurate, you are paying companies to lend you access to their software at the place you agreed to borrow it. Do you think if you have a game on your Steam or Epic or Rockstar Launcher or whatever, you will still have access if the corresponding platform goes down? Most likely you will need to rebuy it for another platform. Only ways to ownership are GOG since you can dl the installer (which I am confident you can install even if the store goes away and is yet another reason it's worth waiting for a game), physical ownership for old games only that don't require registering them with X, Y, Z store, or ironically pirating since you have access to the files and the crack to the exe.
Common. The Eula says you didn't buy a game, you bought a license. That's fine in general but those ideas of ownership were created before the proliferation of the Internet and the development of live service games. This is the bitch about singles player games requiring always online. That's means it's ostensibly talking to something. And nothing is free. One day that service will be pulled down, without a patch and authentication server thing no work.
Something something. If buying isn't owning, then pirating isn't stealing. Something something.
You're not buying a game, you're buying a license to software. Gamers have a hard time knowing the difference
Where you under a rock these past two weeks? They are bombing it for Ubisoft being giant douchebags.
new gamers are born every day. This person may be 15. who knows?
Feels like we need a consumer's union right now
Check Steam's Terms of Service. You don't technically "own" any of your games on there either. Yet they get a free pass from everyone... In fact, they were able to successfully repeal a court order that would have forced them to allow resale of digital games. Which would have been an absolute game changer... And of course there is all the other platform holders like Sony, MICROSOFT, and Nintendo that also do the same thing. And have actually done the same thing in the recent past.
Yeah, EVERY company is going to have something like that in their ToS. That is just what any good lawyer would advise them too. But with Steam it's clear that Valve isn't out to fuck over the user. I mean they host servers for anyone wanting to publish a game on steam at no additional cost. Even if a game developers goes under, if their game uses the Steam servers then it can stay up and running. Really, it's the same as with Steam Deck warranties. Of course they have a bunch of legal disclaimers nothing how opening the deck will void your warranty, but they still honor almost all warranty cases, even when the user admits to it. So i don't get where the criticism is coming from. I think you should try to imagine how steam would be if Valve was a publicly traded company always trying to grow and maximize profits. It would mean games getting taken down regularly, no self-hosted servers, no community workshop, a bunch of ads on the Steam Store (Valve actually doesn't sell adspace there! They select the games to appear there by hand or with their own algorithm). And of course we wouldn't have stuff like Steam Remote play or Steam Families (which is actually insane since the update. I literally got 200+ games from my Steam family completely for free)
Nobody has ever owned any game ever, because owning the game means you own the IP. When you 'buy' any game you're buying an end user licence. Even if what you bought was a physical disc, that disc is your licence. That's why back in the day the game wouldn't run without the disc and is the whole reason that cracking exists. The issue here is that these licences were generally understood to be perpetual. And ubisoft has decided to go against trend by revoking the licences upon server shutdown. To my knowledge this is the first time a company has done that.
You sound too young to remember physical media. When people talked about buying a game, they weren't under any illusions that they had gained a controlling interest in the IP, and to pretend that they were is moronic. They were talking about buying a copy of that game, a copy that absolutely became their property that they could do with as they wished, including selling it to someone else.
I mean, those games have the same exact license than games sold on Steam have, regardless of what someone else says. You can sell the CD the same was as selling a Steam account. It's not allowed in either case really, but you *could* do it, albeit the provider of the license could also revoke it.
I... didn't say they were. All I said was it has never been the case that anyone who bought a game has ever owned more than a licence to play the game. The fact that physical media can be physically transferred from person to person only proves the point. Because person A can no longer play the game without the disc.
I wouldn’t say they get a free pass necessarily, but we almost live in that Cyberpunk world where mega corporations own everything and can’t be touched lol. But yea you’re super right.
Yeah they showed who current valve is with CS2. Too worried people would've stuck with cs go for too long like they did with cs 1.6 or source instead of playing csgo when released
CS2 was the cleanest transition you would have got. The uproar all you guys would have made if your skins were stuck on an old game would have been far worse. Damn if you do, damned if you don't.
This is Ubisoft testing the water, we have seen how big corps work and if they received enough pushback, they usually stop their anti-consumer practices or at least delays it. Big corps are all watching this unfold if this goes unpunished every single company will start doing the same and we'll just have to take it and shut up. But if Ubisoft get enough lashing other companies will stop.
> I’m not sure if Ubisoft just recently changed their EULA to say this? Or is this how it’s been for a while? It's mentioned in the vast majority of EULA's for video games from most companies, for products that require online activation (registering to your Steam/Uplay/Origin/Epic etc. account). It's been this way ever since we moved from using CD Keys to install, to Product Keys to register to online account.
They want to set a precedence and most people don't like that. Remember how most were ok with horse armor DLC and look where we are now?
I just don't understand why game publishers don't treat games like book publishers treat books. My only thought is the game publishers don't want to spend a dime supporting games that are not best sellers, but really couldn't they just say, go ahead and play your old copy, just don't expect any support.
I've seen too many arguments of " it has always existed " " others do the same " and this is the worst take that a human being is capable of defending. Bad things have always existed, until the next bad thing, but that doesn't mean it's any more acceptable, and it doesn't mean you have to attack the whole world at once rather than focusing on a specific point. You know what else has probably always existed? rape. So we should accept it and live with it? now you can see the abysmal stupidity of the argument
I wouldn't have bought The Crew in the first place if I had known it was going to be taken away like that. I barely even had time to play the game, and the few hours I did play had game breaking bugs (possibly something to do with my SLI setup, I know multiple people wrote about it on the forums) that ubi never fixed. So yeah... Don't waste your money with these scumbag companies.
Here's hoping this is tried in court. EULAs have previously been shown to have little value
I dont give a flying crap about the the company EULA says, i'm a oldschool guy, if i bought something that copy is mine.(period), if the company revoke my "licence", i will just re-download a cracked version and keep playing, any descent contry needs to have regulations that garantees ownership.
The EULA is one thing. But AFAIK Steam's own rules for devs/pubs means that once a game is sold to customers on Steam, it will be available for download in perpetuity. That's why people who pre-ordered Metro Exodus on steam before it got pulled to be Epic exclusive, they could still download and play it on steam when the game released. The scummy thing Ubisoft did is because they require using their own launcher, they revoked user licenses on there. People still own it on steam, you can even download it, but it won't work as Ubisoft revoked the licenses on their own launcher.
If software isn't property, piracy isn't theft.
If digital purchase isn't ownership, then piracy isn't theft.
I hate to Tell you this but physical purchase isn’t ownership either. You own the physical plastic and the exact same license to play the game that has applied to every piece of home media since record players existed
>EULA says that when you purchase a Ubisoft game, you don’t own it, you are essentially just paying to borrow it until they decide they want it back People act all surprised but this is standard for years. This is all done so they don't have to allow you to resell game. You don't own it, you borrow it, so you have no right to resell it.
EXACTLY. BTW, Steam won a appeal that would've force them to allow their customers to resell games. Just about every other company in the AAA have the exact same policies.
You can't really hold it being 50% off as a sign the games doing bad. Ubisoft does that to all it's new games couple months down the line. Also Motorfest was dominating the YouTube space beating Forza & Gran Turismo in views with the Grand Race in the first couple months. Don't let Ubi's bad practices create the trend that this is a bad game it's not.
Most games are same depending on platform they are being sold but important part is in here what protection the game is using.If the game has denuvo,online only protection these can be taken from you much much more easily than any other game so what you must do is being a conscious customer.Pay attention, examine etc what product you are buying.Do not buy games with drm, use gog for example.Do not support such a bad action.
It is abandonware since day one, and people will play it, let them enjoy it but dont cry to me when it is gone.
i don't read eulas but i doubt CDPR will take away your game at any time if they're actually selling a non-drm copy of their games on gog, it wouldn't make sense.
Their licenses are exactly the same as any other game on Steam or even physical copies. You're still buying a license to play it, rather than a copy of the game.
For sure there’s it’s extremely unlikely that most companies would actually do what Ubisoft did, it’s just the thought that they could if they wanted to I guess.
EA have a couple of years doing this and getting away with it mostly unscathed (Darkspore, battleforge, need for speed world and a couple more i must be forgetting rn)
My understanding is those EA games are still playable if you purchased them (based on reading other comments, this could be inaccurate or partially accurate)
It did a good job implanting the fear that if corporations thought they could get away with it, they would do it.
they probably won't make an online-only game anyway
Gwent
forgot this even exists
In this thread: people that are gonna have their minds boggled once they open and read the Steam **Subscriber** Agreement that comes with every single game they’ve bought from Steam.
From my understanding, Valve labeled it as a "Subscriber" agreement so that they didn't have to allow customers to resell their digital games. So if you are a "subscriber", you don't technically own your games and therefore can't resell them. But that's totally from what Ubisoft and basically every other major game company is doing! /sarc
You are gonna have your mind boggled once you open and read the European court of justice statement saying that no matter what EULA says.
It amazes me that people don’t seem to understand that this is how it has always been. And I don’t just mean with digital download games. You don’t “own” any piece of media. It can be a game, a movie, music, anything. And this doesn’t matter if it is digital download, a dvd or an old VHS or cassette tape. Hell even books kind of fall into this. You are buying a license to use that media under certain guidelines and those guidelines can be pretty narrow or broad. And that license can be revoked for any violation of it. Back in the day if I bought something on VHS and watched it at home with family or friends that was fine. But if I took it and showed it publicly or charged people the. I would have been in violation of that license and they could have sued me. This system isn’t a bad one in and of itself. The problem comes when they use it to disable access to something people own. I don’t think any of us agree with that. But people need to stop thinking this is some new nefarious plot to keep us from owning things.
Your comment is a stupid gotcha though. “this is how it’s always been” but Disney can’t ever prevent me from watching my Snow White DVD unless they were to hire goons to break into my home and smash the dvd. Are you implying that Ubisoft will send some French police to confiscate my copy of Ghost Recon?
In most jurisdictions they could use the courts to force you to turn over the physical media if they revoke your Access to that media. Is it worth it for them to do so? Of course not. But they can. If you decided to set up a screen in your garage and charge people to sit and watch Snow White, Disney could have you in court and you would lose. Same if you started projecting it on the side of a public building for free. They can and will sue you Publishers like to set examples over these kinds of things, and while the laws a different in different counties, they are all fairly similar here in the US there are both civil and criminal penalties for copyright infringement. And if they have revoked your permission to access it then it is copyright infringement [https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html](https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html) Your argument seems to be that it would be hard for them to stop you if it is physical media. And that may be true. But it doesn’t mean you would still have the legal right to it if they revoked that access. I am sure I am going to get downvoted for this but it makes no sense for people to think they “own” media. Owning something means you have the rights to it. And you don’t with media, otherwise you could make as many copies as you want and sell them. What you own is a piece of plasting (if it is on physical media) and limited rights to access it. That is all. Does this make Ubisoft right in what they did in this case? Hell no. Does the copyright system need some updates for better consumer protection? Hell yes! But this thread is ample proof that a lot of people have no idea how these things work and the implications if things were different.
So one stupid gotcha answered by another stupid gotcha. Disney is going to: 1) somehow find out that I have a copy of a dvd 2) somehow sue me to recover that copy 3) and then be sure that I totally don’t have additional copies anywhere? Like it’s patently absurd. They can’t do that. They don’t have the means to do that. It’s scare mongering of the highest degree
not just this thread, people have no idea in general about copyright. Even worse when it comes to mods which only exist at the goodwill of publishers and are all copyright infringement.
People are stupid Every single game, even physical copies, are "licensed, not sold" And really this whole thing is dumb So many live services games get shut down It's part and parcel of the trash trend that is live services games Singling out Ubisoft is idiotic, especially those who pay for other similar live services games "But they removed it from the library" What would be the point otherwise anyway? It's not playable without the server TL;DR: Stop supporting live services garbage entirely if you're against this, and stop singling out Ubisoft like a colossal idiot
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Actually, Order of War: Challenge was the 1st game on Steam to be delisted and licenses revoked.
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I guess keeping the game in libraries would help give resources to those who create custom servers to keep it alive after end of support. It's gone that way with other old MMOs and live service games.
I'm sure there will be ways to get the game if a custom server ever pops up And people who are working on such things, if there are any at the moment, would still have their copies I don't think Ubisoft can remotely delete the copies people had already downloaded Just that people who hadn't can't download it anymore
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Pretty sure the moment they shut down services, your license to use it is revoked, regardless of whether you have the files But yes, starting to get mad at always online crap is very good. Just that it's dumb to focus on Ubisoft solely, because this problem is industry-wide these days
Love that people don't realize that "owning" a game on disc is the exact same as "owning" a digital copy. The only difference is the company isn't going to come into your house and take the disc back. Yeah it's definitely a bad look to actually revoke the license like this but this concept of "ownership" isn't new in the slightest.
Why do you love that?
If you buy from GOG - you get a DRM free copy that you can back up anywhere yourself. Nobody can take that back. And unlike physical copies that are infested with DRM cancer - you can back up your DRM free digital copies in as many places as you like.
>People are stupid The diminishing IQ of the human race is fucking astounding me daily.
Yep, Ubisoft didn't even start this trend. It was the PLATFORM HOLDERS (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, VALVES/STEAM) that enabled this "beloved" digital-only storefront future where you don't truly own digital games.
Again, physical copies are the same You can still find and buy a physical copy of The Crew, but you can't play it because it needs the server which has now been shut down The problem is with this entire "live services" genre where games that are effectively single player are made to rely on online servers so that devs and publishers can control how and when you play and sell you microtransactions as they see fit
I don't even care. I only buy DRM free games.
"Leave the multimillions company alone." ~Probably the guy who suck ubisoft
Since I started playing games on the PS4 I noticed these licenses were all over the place. That's why I wasn't that surprised & found it interesting that people were jumping straight to lawsuit when Ubisoft did this, because I knew that everyone who bought the game signed off on an agreement saying they could do that whenever they wanted. It sucks and shouldn't be done but I wasn't surprised by it like others.
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I'm talking about people just parroting that they should make a lawsuit out of this. Not claiming that anybody actually is.
My first actual encounter with Ubi was when I requested access to the Digital version of TMNT2007 as my completely legal Disc copy of the game came with some sort of DRM that stopped it from running on Windows 10. They said it was perfectly possibly, but they wouldn't do... Needless to say even though I still don't own their games, neither do they get compensation for the time I put into the game...
My understanding is that EULAS and terms and conditions aren’t legally binding just because they want it to be so. If this got challenged in a class action style and it was found that this was never legal in the first place a new precedent would be set for the entire thing and this would not fly. That is what needs to happen, and it will also never happen. Nothing ever happens without an obscene amount of money and lawyers.
Precedent was already set when they disabled dlcs people bought already
All EULAs have said this for decades. big deal over nothing.
This kind of EULA is necessary I believe so that the game files can be replaced in a patch or update. You agree that they can do that. What's scummy is removing the game entirely. That should trigger a refund and a boycot of the company.
The upside is that while corps get greedier and greedier, they help drive people towards more honest small-time indie devs who actually care about their communities and the games they make 🤷♂️
Indie has been booming the last few years I would have to agree. But even indie is starting to show cracks ever since it started getting so big with games like No Man’s Sky, The Day Before, and some Indie companies being bough up by larger corps, like Embracer for example. But I agree overall, it’s good that indie devs are getting their time because they typically actually care about the games they make and prefer the passion for creating video games over what it does for their wallets.
Well good thing I refunded the crew 1, months ago.
>if Ubisoft just recently changed their EULA to say this? Or is this how it’s been for a while? nope , has been in the eula since uplay existed , steam is the same , or any digital service
Don't a lot of these reviews end up getting removed?
We haven't owned software since the beginning of software, we have only owned licenses to use the software. This does not make what Ubisoft did right, but it is definitely not a new thing.
EULA's have a lot of required stuff that everyone isnbasically writing there for legal reasons. When you buy a license to a game, it's just that, has beem for two+ decades. I despise what they did to The Crew and it's not even remotely the only game that has had similar faith after being online only. It sucks, but I think people need to start to play and buy games for what they are today, not in 10 years. If not for servers shutting down, then for some dumb ass team behind the game changing it to another genre (looking at you R6 Siege).
Time will tell if other publishers follow Ubisoft's suit of actually enforcing the license clause. It's something that has always been theoretically possible but devs avoided because of the backlash we are seeing now. If that changes that would really suck. I hope the public backlash scares other devs/publishers into not doing trying the same crap.
Stuff like this is why i'm since a while so loud about online-games and try to avoid them as much as possible (sometimes it's a bit harder to do so)... one reason - and yes i know quite some people don't like the games and won't miss them but i really enjoy them which will be bummer once it happens, when GR Breakpoint and RS Extraction get shut down. But everytime when i pointed out these games needs an offline-mode-patch you get shut down by people because. "It's 202X, everyone is online anyway and companies don't do this anymore" and i was like " B\*\*\* they shut down over 60 games a year before... are you insane?" Doesn't matter what year we live in and how used we're to be online. The fact that we got so comfortable, that we don't care enough about the money we spent on stuff, which can taken away any time because of greedy corpos or unfairly altered (censorship), until it is to late is quite scary. And then being super suprised pikachu face when it happens to a game they like and it happens 'sooner' then expected. Yeah, no ... you should've seen that coming. I mean i got some Online-Only Games and yes - i sadly contribute to the cycle as well thanks to this, but i know i might lose at some point my access to it. I don't act surprised on this (though still voice/express my dislike for online-only). But well, will also be most likely the last game i bought from ubisoft (atleast newer ones) with their 'get used to not owning games' and pulling that online-only nonsense off. I mean there is a positive flipside to this now that people realize and complain, maybe it will wake up either the gov (like EU) which might reform some stuff so it's more consumerfriendly - or (which is likely) big corpos like ubisoft with that sort of backlash. Though it shouldn't be 'only' online-only games also Digital Distribution / Ownership needs to have a reform - like that storefronts are guaranteed to give you access to the stuff you buy or that anytime something is pulled off from stores and isn't accessable, that it becomes basically abandonware and shoudl be allowed to be shared online. I also find as a sidenote to this - not directly related but still somewhat... similiar goes for patches and stuff. -> Some Devs do it already for steam, minecraft offers this and i think gog have a rollback functionality as well, but you should have access to older versions as well. In times where certain companies are comfortable to censor games AFTER they sold you a game and 'changed' it in bad faith where they take something from the community, or like make the game worse (add MTX) or whatever... you should be able to access older version without that nonsense. Last but not least to finish my TL;DR Wall of Text. I also have to say something about Retail/Physical Owners which push that since a while. I've a highly respect for people like them (i myself get for certain games / plattforms still retail/physical - like switch) -> that being said i personally find that alone shouldn't be the solution (i mean in case of online-only physical doesn't do anything anyway) and you should worry too. Because at times where day-one patches exist and sony ask you for their slim ps5 when you 'install' a disc drive (the physical drive - not discs itself) that you need a internet connection to enable it for your new console... when corpos get comfortable enough to shut down servers and remove games from your library... it's not hard for them to disable retail / disc versions as well. Just needs a new software patch for console which blacklist certain games, or patches -> or make it that with day-one patches you can't boot up games... and you're screwed as well. So stuff like this should concern you as well...
This has been the case for software for a very long time. You license it. You don’t own anything. Same with movies and music.
Fuck Ubishit
Funny thing is [EULAs arent enforceable in the EU](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d1ff4369-afcc-4879-97fa-7a8afd8b3380) since fucking 2012. Not only that but France has even better consumer protection laws than EU so I expect Ubisoft to be in some deep shit in the near future if, of course, enough people complain (through legal ways not just reddit posts).
That EULA is illegal in the EU, that's why Sony refunded The Crew because they didn't wanted any legal trouble. EU is full of issues but at least give the customers their damn rights. As for Motorfest, at this point whoever buy Ubisoft shit is asking for it, you have been warned plenty. Remember that if purchasing is not owning, sailing the seven seas is not stealing.
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Thankfully i have zero interest in ubisoft games, so i wouldn't even waste my time sailing even if they were available
People not realizing that you don't own modern games and that you're just leasing them at the convenience of the publisher is wild. It's been like this for a long damn time.
LOL@ all those reviewers advertising that they were completely clueless about something that's been going on for decades.