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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

#351

Post by grumbel »

Closi wrote: post #344
grumbel wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Which digital sales system still works when the shop I bought it from goes down (as happened with GameStopApp and Desura)? Even DRM-free doesn't work in the modern landscape where games are getting updates years down the road. Trying to sell a DRM-free game, while theoretically allowed, is also not really practical.

If GameStopApp wanted to allow you to transfer them they could have - hence it being commercial rather than technological.

How do I transfer a game from a shop that is already dead into one that doesn't yet exist? Any kind of transfer depends on both services still being alive and well. With NFTs I could retain ownership even when the shop is gone.

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

#352

Post by Paradigma11 »

Lazare wrote: 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…

"...up to an including the fact that if you get banned you...lose your NFTs."

That cant be right, well Ubisoft could still fuck this up. I can sell my NFTs on marketplaces completely independent of ubisoft. Sure they could invalidate, not honor the NFTs, but i wouldnt expect them to do so unless criminal activity like money laundering is involved.

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

#353

Post by mattdesl »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #316
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #313

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.

In theory if some kind of token-as-license system were to be used by a game distributor, it would be trivial to confirm that the token contract address (0xff..) matches the contract address required by the distributor. Other tokens may appear similar, but would have a different addressable hash.

The same is currently true of the NFT art market: an artist can say "I minted 0xff.." and so a token with hash "0xaa.." is clearly not originating from that artist, despite them having some similar attributes.

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

#354

Post by sireat »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #316
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #313

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.

Silly question, did this person/entity selling Mickey permutations on opensea actually pay around 400k USD equivalent in Ether to mint those 4000 NFTs?

I am guessing there is some way around minting fees.

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

#355

Post by smorgusofborg »

cinntaile wrote: post #312
Lazare wrote: 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 if he creates a new account and transfers the NFTs (that function as your proof of ownership of a game in this case), then you're good to go again. Since they can't be deleted. It's a different story if your NFTs are banned of course, then it wouldn't matter if you transfer them to a new account.

I think it would be far more frequent that crackers gain control of NFTs and transfer them to a new account. Are users going to rejoice in the existence of a smart receipt they didn't understand when they are locked out of their purchases and perhaps declared dead on the block chain?

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

#356

Post by Cederfjard »

grumbel wrote: post #342
Closi wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How? Which digital sales system still works when the shop I bought it from goes down (as happened with GameStopApp and Desura)? Even DRM-free doesn't work in the modern landscape where games are getting updates years down the road. Trying to sell a DRM-free game, while theoretically allowed, is also not really practical.

But do you agree that this is not a very difficult technical problem, and could be implemented with our without a blockchain, and that the real issue would be how to get all actors involved to buy in to such a system? Why would Ubisoft want this? Commercial entities are typically motivated by profit, not wanting to bring Ready Player One to life.

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

#357

Post by vbezhenar »

grumbel wrote: post #332
Lazare wrote: 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…

Ubisoft could generate some XML with list of games and sign it with their private key with known certificate. This XML is proof of purchase that you can back up and import into other stores. All it takes is some cooperation between stores. You don't need blockchain, it's basic public key cryptography.

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

#358

Post by cedilla »

grumbel wrote: post #347
ohgodplsno wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> No, that would require the other game provider to accept your Ubisoft-minted token. Game providers already accept games from other shops. I can import my Steam games into GoG right now. That feature exists. The issue is that it's very limited due to digital game ownership being a mess. > having an intermediate token adds _more_ friction. It adds no friction at all, as you could hide it completely within the client.…

If the publisher who provides the game downloads doesn't honour your store account, why would they honour your text file?

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

#359

Post by Lazare »

grumbel wrote: post #332
Lazare wrote: 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…

> That wouldn't be a problem with NFTs as they could just go to another game provider...

...nothing says an NFT needs to be arbitrarily transferable. Again, Ubisoft is launching an NFT that has a huge laundry list of conditions around who can own them and when and how you are allowed to transfer them.

If Ubisoft won't let you transfer your Ghost Recon pants NFT to whomever you like, why would they let you transfer an NFT representing a game?

> 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.

Again, this is not a technical problem, it's a legal and economic problem. And as you say, we already have this feature (without NFTs), so why do we need NFTs? I bought a copy of Satisfactory on Epic; I'd like to play it on Steam. There's is zero technical reason why I can't go through some basic oauth flow to verify that I control both accounts, and let me remove the license from Epic and add it to Steam. Or even better, let me press a button and turn my copy on Epic into a product key that I can paste into Steam, or resell on Ebay. Wouldn't that be cool?

And why doesn't this exist? Well, because the companies involved (markets and publishers) don't want it to. So, well, yes, you could also solve this is a much more difficult and expensive way (with NFTs), they don't want that solution to exist either.

Steam already had a very well functioning marketplace for transferring digital items including - in very limited cases - games between accounts. Why can't I sell the copy of Portal 2 I've finished? Again, no technical reason, but because that's the last thing they want people to do.

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

#360

Post by smorgusofborg »

nicbou wrote: post #343
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #313

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…

> What about proving ownership A receipt?

I have to admit the NFT is a positive here since you could prove ownership that a site like archive.org could prove they could verify.. So an independent third party could have more ways to navigate IP law and be able to replace failing services, serve older content the site wants to forget, etc.
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