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Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity

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Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity

#271

Post by falcor84 »

ehsankia wrote: post #145

Ubisoft claims accounts with games on it will never be up for deletion. I could see this being a bug, but could also just simply be that... the person is confused and that specific account didn't actually have a game on it? Could it be a different account maybe? That seems a more likely and simple explanation to me, and this right now just comes down to a he said / she said. Obviously it's not great that the ToS has…

I don't know what your experience with Ubisoft is, but based on mine, I would always default to mistrusting them.

Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity

#272

Post by tjoff »

deelly wrote: post #268
tjoff wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of DRM wouldn't help if you don't have any way of getting the copy or getting past the license check.

Wait, but DRM free means that there no license check..

Not what we usually mean when we say DRM though. The check can be done entirely offline.

Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity

#273

Post by tjoff »

falcor84 wrote: post #270
tjoff wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of DRM wouldn't help if you don't have any way of getting the copy or getting past the license check.

Doesn't DRM-free literally mean that you get a full local installation without any reliance on online licensing or any other digital restrictions?

Sure, just like the olden days. But you still need a license key or equivalent - for an offline check. And in the case of an app store that is handled by the app store, you never get or see the key. So if you are banned that doesn't help.

And even if you had a key you still don't have access to the install media. You could try to extract it from your drive but there is no guarantee that will work on another computer or OS-install since the installer might optionally install what is needed on that computer.

Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity

#274

Post by Aeolun »

endisneigh wrote: post #15

This article is a great example of why we need legislation around ownership of digital items. I generally hate getting the government involved in things, but if you're paying money for goods, there needs to be a way to be credited or receive your digital goods in a way that still works without your "account". Personally I always get kind of nervous around buying things on PSN, Xbox, Stadia, Steam, Oculus, etc. If the…

> If they ban me, do I lose my thousands of dollars of games?

I can kind of understand if you were legitimately in the wrong (e.g. sending death threats to other users, getting a warning, and then doing it again), but in the situation where you are simply inactive for some period of time I think it’s unreasonable.

Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity

#275

Post by bell-cot »

estaseuropano wrote: post #210
Hokusai wrote: post #21

> 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.

In a world where malicious parties might break into your (say) GOG account and try to delete it, there are "non-evil" reasons for GOG to make account deletion somewhat difficult.

Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity

#276

Post by zzt123 »

estaseuropano wrote: post #210
Hokusai wrote: post #21

> 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.

Is it unnecessarily complicated though? I feel like while “stop paying more” should be an easy process, “permanently lose access to a thing I already paid for” should be difficult in order to guard against unexpected things, since it is a potentially irreversible event with negative monetary consequences for the user.

Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity

#277

Post by j_4 »

jimmydorry wrote: post #206
3np wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's a different thing from what OP is saying, they're right that Steam doesn't automatically enforce any DRM. It does provide the mechanisms but it's up to the devs whether they use them or not. In lots of cases you can just directly run the executable, especially for indie games.

Source: am indie game dev

Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity

#278

Post by GoblinSlayer »

IshKebab wrote: post #234
tdrdt wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one simple legislation could help a lot: forbid to use the word 'buy' in this context. Instead it should be 'hire' or 'lease' or something. Once I 'bought' an e-book that was copy protected by Adobe (my fault I didn't read the specs before buying). But because you can only read it when Adobe's servers are online no ownership is transferred to you as buyer. You buy rights to read the book on their terms. 'Hire…

That sounds like a good idea. It would probably make sense to require that they specify how long you get to lease it for, rather than the current situation which is pretty much "until we decide not to run the service anymore".

Something like "buy a 1 month subscription".

Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity

#279

Post by nurettin »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #261
nurettin wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How to profit from written material without some sort of government enforcing my rights to ownership? Do I have to go begging on social media?

Don't really know. Patronage seems to be working well these days. Lots of creators seem to be finding success on services like Patreon. Also, crowdfunding. There needs to be a way to get paid before you create it for the labor of creating it. The creators and their labor are what's valuable, not the end result. Data is infinitely abundant and trying to limit access to data is just insane. It's the 21st century and we…

Okay I pour hours into content and go begging. What is my compensation if it doesn't succeed?

Re: Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity

#280

Post by kranner »

RealStickman_ wrote: post #215
kranner wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same thing for my Kindle purchases. Luckily I have a Paperwhite whose serial number works with DeDRM to strip DRM for all my Kindle purchases (except Hindi books which are not downloadable for some reason).

You could also use the PC kindle app to download books and strip their DRM. That might be easier than transferring every book back and forth. (I use the kindle 1.26 version. It requires an additional plugin to convert the new amazon format, but works with DeDRM after that.)

Thanks for the tip, I haven't tried it with the PC Kindle app! An additional issue with (most) Hindi books is that they aren't supported on the Mac app, so they don't even download into the app's storage, let alone as standalone AZWs for manual transfer.
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