Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you use a private tracker you will usually be fine.
What good private trackers still exist and are possible to join?
TL, must be run out of an embassy or Transnistria lol
Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity
201–210 of 543 posts
Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
These days I generally pirate the single-player content I purchase anyway. Anything that requires Origin, Epic, uPlay, or any other cancerous software to be installed gets paid for and promptly pirated. I trust the Pirate Bay more than I trust Ubisoft.
Is that really practical these days given the frequency of updates developers put out for their games?
I don't buy games in a broken state hoping they'll be good later. Either I wait until they're done or don't buy them at all.
Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You have the right not to pay money to companies that won't give you the guarantee of ownership and access that you want. I have way more rights than that. Or if not I will fight to get them. I do not want to depend on the good will of corporations. I want fair laws that control their behavior like we have with physical goods.
> I have way more rights than that. Or if not I will fight to get them. So let me get this straight: companies are offering a recreational product, games, on terms you don't like. But instead of not paying them money, so they will be forced to either change their business model or go out of business, you want to get the government involved? For games ? > I do not want to depend on the good will of corporations. Good…
> So let me get this straight: companies are offering a recreational product, games, on terms you don't like. But instead of not paying them money, so they will be forced to either change their business model or go out of business, you want to get the government involved? For games?
No, for digital rights, not necessarily only games. Also, games cost money, money is my time on Earth being converted into cash through my labour, I deserve to have my only real resource (time) protected from being taken from me due to shitty business practices. A ToS/ToU/T&C isn't a higher law than national laws just because I clicked "I accept" and I hope that my government will get involved to protect me from more powerful entities than a single individual can take on, doesn't matter if it's games or any other digital goods, it costs money, I get protections.
Or you can live in this cyberpunk-ish hellhole where corporations can dictate what is legal or not and your only power is to choose to not buy from them, I much prefer my government and the society that supports it to be dictate what these corporations can do rather than the goodwill of a for-profit corporation.
It's all checks and balances, goodwill isn't really compatible with the morality of chasing profits so we need something else to imbue morality in this system (aka, a government), you liking it or not.
Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity
#204> The company’s support page also cites the General Data Protection Regulation compliance and freeing database space as the main reason why they delete unused accounts. Oh wow. That 1k of database data must really be dragging down their system. /s Seriously, what kind of child's-first-attempt-to-use-a-database system are they using where this is even a consideration? :(
It could have been 1 kilobyte, but after numerous decisions to track everything to the Nth degree, the account was closer to 400 petabytes.
When I contracting at a large tech company, so had to implement a service that would delete any personally identifying information from the database for users that had been inactive for more than 18 months. Essentially this meant dynamically scanning the entire database schema for any columns that had a user ID and deleting any matching records. It was kind of a fun project.
Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
You set up a server and allow any wallet with the license in it to sign a valid request to download and launch the game. > Even with licensing, you couldn't play offline? That’s a good point. The GOG DRM-free model wouldn’t work here. Someone smarter than me could likely give you an answer.
You haven't explained where the game is stored, though. Where would the game be downloaded from? How much would it cost to do this. If you setup a server that's centralized the defeats the entire purpose of this.
You would download the game from the same place you’d get updates if you bought a physical copy off a friend. The purpose isn’t decentralized downloads. It’s retaining the ability to virtually press the eject button and put the disc in a different console.
Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity
#206This article is a great example of why we need legislation around ownership of digital items. I generally hate getting the government involved in things, but if you're paying money for goods, there needs to be a way to be credited or receive your digital goods in a way that still works without your "account". Personally I always get kind of nervous around buying things on PSN, Xbox, Stadia, Steam, Oculus, etc. If the…
> Personally I always get kind of nervous around buying things on PSN, Xbox, Stadia, Steam, Oculus, etc. If they ban me, do I lose my thousands of dollars of games? You didn’t buy any games. You paid for access, but as you note you don’t actually own any of these games. Please stop giving in to the doublespeak BS of these companies. Other than the false marketing (using words like “buy”) and that DRM is toxic, I don’…
You can only be offline for a set amount of time with Steam (last I used it), and the check is made before you go offline.
Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is costing a developer money — someone who downloads the pirated game would’ve otherwise bought it. Game devs make money on sales. However if you have already bought the game, and then download a pirated version, it isn’t.
Maybe lay off the eggnog or before reading HN so that you don't comment this poorly w/o reading the thread... They've bought it, the Dev. Got whatever pittance the publisher seems worthy, they just want an experience unadulterated by crappy launchers or corrupted by overzealous DRM.
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Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
You haven't explained where the game is stored, though. Where would the game be downloaded from? How much would it cost to do this. If you setup a server that's centralized the defeats the entire purpose of this.
You would download the game from the same place you’d get updates if you bought a physical copy off a friend. The purpose isn’t decentralized downloads. It’s retaining the ability to virtually press the eject button and put the disc in a different console.
You're being very vague. If the game is centrally located there's absolutely no point of using a distributed ledger to begin with. The same place the game is stored can store your license.
Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For games? No, for money. These actions are always dismissed on the basis that they're not selling something important. But setting aside the question of whether that's valid, they are selling in exchange for something important.
> These actions are always dismissed on the basis that they're not selling something important. No, it's on the basis that the buyer knew the terms perfectly well before the sale, and bought the thing anyway . The fact that it's a game that was bought just makes it even more unreasonable for the buyer to want to retroactively change the terms of the sale.
But it's reasonable for the same corporations to "update" their Terms and Conditions under your feet while your only recourse against is to completely severe the relationship? Which party has the power in this relationship? Why do you consider the "terms of sale" to be the only important aspect of contract relationships?
Are you also against regulations on food sales? Why can't a corporation just sell whatever bad and spoiled food they have and let customers decide by themselves if they want to be food poisoned or not? We do have rights to protect us, customers, in unbalanced power relationships.
Personal/individual responsibility only goes so far. If you like to be stomped by more powerful entities than you because you don't like governments, good luck. Just remind yourself you have never experienced a world where you don't have safeguards provided by your government to keep your life somewhat safe and somewhat more fair.
Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity
#210> We may also close long-term inactive accounts to maintain our database. How many kilobytes takes too store ownership data? I can just imagine that tracking data is thousands of times bigger. > The crazy thing about this is that it’s perfectly legal for video game companies to delete your account regardless of whether you’ve spend zero or a thousand dollars on their games It's a shame that we are going to fight for…
On the other hand two weeks ago I tried to delete my GOG account which was a very annoying and unnecessarily complicated process.
Companies just like to decide what is 'good for us', which ends up being what is good for their own metrics.