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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

#331
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Personally I always get kind of nervous around buying things on PSN My PlayStation account was blocked for online games/chat for 2 months with no clear reason, this also wasted 2 months of PS Plus subscription sice I could not really benefit from it. They did not offer any way to dispute this or clarify what exactly was wrong to avoid it. My son was using the console to play Fortnite, he told me that some guy blackm…

Sony is extremely trigger happy with suspending based on messages. I’ve gotten a few weeks suspension for ‘harassment’ because I told someone that kept messaging me I was hacking that that was ‘honestly kind of dumb’.

I've completely given up on playing with strangers. All my experiences were negative, and whenever they weren't, they were just neutral.

One time I tried playing Battlefield 2 online (usually played against bots) and played the same map for a few hours (one that didn't work with bots). First I had some trouble, but then I learned the map and how the players behaved so I could anticipate their actions a little, got more kills, and suddenly I got kicked and accused of hacking because my online profile didn't show enough hours played and I beat some of the guys with 1000h+. Sometimes I wonder how anyone gets into e-sports when "being slightly better than average" immediately means "hacking".

When I started playing Rocket League I almost immediately turned off voice and text chats. Made the game 100x better.

Recently I tried playing a co-op game, thinking there should at least be some more friendly attitudes there. Accidentally hit a teammate (didn't die), who immediately lost his shit over voice chat and proceeded to murder me shortly after.

The only thing that could have made these things worse would have been some service suspending me on top of getting harrassed, which is apparently Sony's solution.

To be honest, I don't see an easy solution to this, or even a difficult one without creating the equivalent of the judicial system of a medium-sized nation. Banning bad words won't ban bad behavior. Automated bans can be easily used for blackmail. Cheating/hacking prevention seems to be impossible even for extremely successful games (e.g. GTA V), plus it doesn't seem to deter players, so there's not much incentive anyway.

Maybe blacklisting is the wrong approach. Maybe we need better whitelisting schemes instead.

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

#332
post #290

I feel a bit disappointed by the number of people suggesting that an NFT would somehow help here. An NFT is just a fancy signed receipt. I can mint an NFT saying the OP owns a bunch of Ubisoft games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed. Ubisoft could mint an NFT saying he owns a bunch of games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed . (He probably still has the receipts from when…

> but his account will still be closed.

That wouldn't be a problem with NFTs as they could just go to another game provider, show their proof-of-ownership and download their games from there. Such import functionality already exist to some limited degree right now with GoG, Steam and Co., but all of them require that your account with Ubisoft is still working. NFTs would work even if Ubisoft disappeared completely.

Furthermore NFTs would allow used game sales, something we have lost with the switch from physical to digital, despite it being required by law in many countries. A signed recipe is nowhere good enough, as that still depends on your account at Ubisoft, e.g. to keep track of if you refunded the game or not.

Now getting the game industry to actually implement and use an NFT based game-ownership system, that's the tricky part. But claiming there is no technological problem that needs solving is ignoring all the freedoms we lost by going digital with our purchases and that could be regained with NFTs.

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

#334

This is why we need blockchain-based smart contracts and NFTs to enforce digital ownership rights. The political system is far too unreliable and corruptible to depend on for robust private property rights. If the nation-states can just maintain a free and open internet, decentralized opt-in protocols can do the rest.

None of that is going to be used the way you want it to. You know what NFTs are REALLY gonna be used for in the gaming space? Digital property ownership of in-game assets that remit value back to the publisher whenever these fake goods get traded. People are pretending that all these good things are gonna come out of smart contracts and tokens, when the reality is that the most useful thing to come out of them is goi…

The biggest and most important use of NFTs in gaming space is going to be raising money on Kickstarter for an NFT based video game - and then disappearing with the money

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

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>no technological problem // What about proving ownership, on the balance of probabilities, to show tortuous damages in a court? Seems like a list of receipts that's somehow certified would be beneficial to that end? Probably first we need legislation to make digital purchases resalable, and to require DRM free versions to be made available if a product is EOL-ed. Companies world copyright against the populous who ar…

NFT's are not a source of truth. It's an illusion to think that they are, but they aren't. The stolen art that is put on NFT's from artists is still the artists one and not from the NFT creator. Eg. https://opensea.io/DisneyCollectibles Ontopic: the company that creates the software/game owns your account, there is literally 0 benefit for them to use a NFT.

Yeah I have been involved in the community and things like Ubisoft making an NFT is 0% utility and 100% money grab. Don't trust gaming companies NFT providing any sort of value to you. Those things are not good for the community.

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

#336

People won't like this, but we at Ultra.io are trying to tackle this exact problem by deploying certificates of ownership to a decentralized ledger as proof of your owning a game. AKA, we want to mint NFTs for each game sold, which allows a user to prove they own it. People hate those words, but we think that the tech has real value and a use-case in the market for solving inequity between publishers and users. This…

So you've literally reinvented "but I have a receipt!"

But with a MUCH larger carbon footprint

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

#337

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…

> I generally hate getting the government involved in things

It is sad when it occurs, but that's the exact reason why governments are there: they're (theoretically) reliable powerful people that should protect us from other unreliable powerful people, in exchange of being kept in power. Any other alternative would involve violence.

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

#338
post #290

I feel a bit disappointed by the number of people suggesting that an NFT would somehow help here. An NFT is just a fancy signed receipt. I can mint an NFT saying the OP owns a bunch of Ubisoft games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed. Ubisoft could mint an NFT saying he owns a bunch of games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed . (He probably still has the receipts from when…

> but his account will still be closed. That wouldn't be a problem with NFTs as they could just go to another game provider, show their proof-of-ownership and download their games from there. Such import functionality already exist to some limited degree right now with GoG, Steam and Co., but all of them require that your account with Ubisoft is still working. NFTs would work even if Ubisoft disappeared completely. F…

OPs point is that all of that can be done without the use of NFTs - the reasons Ubisoft are doing this are commercial not because of technical limitations.

Just saying NFTs will solve it even if Ubisoft goes rogue completely ignores other things that would need to happen too - ie how do you avoid double redemption and multiple installs?

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

#339
post #290

I feel a bit disappointed by the number of people suggesting that an NFT would somehow help here. An NFT is just a fancy signed receipt. I can mint an NFT saying the OP owns a bunch of Ubisoft games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed. Ubisoft could mint an NFT saying he owns a bunch of games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed . (He probably still has the receipts from when…

> but his account will still be closed. That wouldn't be a problem with NFTs as they could just go to another game provider, show their proof-of-ownership and download their games from there. Such import functionality already exist to some limited degree right now with GoG, Steam and Co., but all of them require that your account with Ubisoft is still working. NFTs would work even if Ubisoft disappeared completely. F…

No, that would require the other game provider to accept your Ubisoft-minted token. Since they already don't with a very centralised system that makes this very easy, having an intermediate token adds _more_ friction.

NFTs are a bunch of worthless bullshit.

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

#340
You know how the sale of M&M X Legacy was for some period of time disabled, because DRM was broken thus the game was unplayable? I'd seen a news that it got restored, so I login to Uplay (or Ubisoft Connect as they call it nowadays) and see... that my game is missing.

I frickin <3 Ubi /s

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