Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mmos.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 543 posts

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

#381

Post by s_dev »

lobocinza wrote: post #375

Intellectual property does not make sense on theory or in real life. When you "buy" a game you are paying for convenience, for server access, for updates & support, and for other platform services like storing saves at cloud. You don't own a thing and pirating a game while illegal is trivial. The issue here was putting money on a shitty service that does not care about it's customers experience. I have spent thousand…

>I don't expect my account to be terminated after 1 year of activity but I also don't expect it to last forever and to be able to pass it to descendants.

Why? It doesn't have to be passed on to descendants -- you could for example sell it before you die. I'm not sure why any time limit would be imposed.

It's already happened to me -- EA Origin. I simply can't play my C&C Generals games anymore despite legally purchased them from EA. The only option now is illegal.

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

#382

Post by 3np »

fivre wrote: post #237
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…

Nobody gives a flying fuck whether the terms are legally accurate. This distinction is entirely already covered in the existing terms of service. People are annoyed that they can pay for something (sometimes an essential identity service), be arbitrarily denied it, and have no recourse other than maybe getting lucky by writing a complaint post that gets traction and read by some human who can tell the abuse departmen…

Words do go a long way and can make the distinction clear for potential customers.

As an example, in Sweden, a country with historically strong consumer-protection regulation, you are not allowed to market something as "gratis" (free) if you need to pay to receive it. You can say something is "included" or "receive X without additional cost when buying Y", but free needs to be truly free of cost. You are also not allowed to say "the [best/fastest/strongest]" etc without pointing to an independent party backing it up. Carlsberg gets around this with "probably the best beer in the world", for example. They would not be allowed to drop the "probably", and it would take more than some random magazine or website to address that.

It does make a real difference in businesses ability to manipulate consumer expectations.

I agree with OP that requiring "buy" to mean actual transfer of ownership without hooks would make a huge difference.

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

#383

Post by Thiez »

saargrin wrote: post #285
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…

we let it happen with music before, where apple and spotify and others can just delete stuff you purchased from your library... this actually sounds like the only beneficial use for NFTs i can think of

How would an NFT help here? Nobody is disputing that you bought the music (or, more precisely, bought a license for the music, that they may revoke at their discretion). The NFT proves nothing that a receipt wouldn't also prove. What you want is a law that forbids the current practice of revoking ownership.

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

#384

Post by cinntaile »

Lazare wrote: post #348
cinntaile wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ubisoft is already making NFTs (for cosmetics in this case; same tech though) where they control who can own or transfer NFTs. So...no., this doesn't help. Ubisoft doesn't need NFTs to let people transfer their games to a new account, and they don't need to let people transfer their games just because they've given you a fancy commemorative memento of the time you gave them money in exchange for not owning a game.

You didn't read what I wrote, I'll try and rephrase it. I am talking about NFTs where you as the owner of the NFT control who you can transfer it to, I explicitly mentioned this. If you can do this, then it can be a solution to the current problem. Because then you simply transfer your ownership rights to your new account.

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

#385

Post by throwawaycities »

cedilla wrote: post #370
throwawaycities wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An NFT is just a fancy signed receipt. That may be how some NFTs are utilized. But it’s probably better to think of an ERC20 (tokens) and ERC721 (NFTs) as self executing code on the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The difference between the two is that ERC20 standard is self-similar and the ERC721 standard is uniquely identifiable. Sure you can mint an NFT with “whatever record” you want in theory, if the NFT isn’t minte…

How exactly would the embedded program force Ubisoft to act?

Self-executing programs on EVM would entirely remove the need to force anything, which is OPs “solution”.

We have seen it time and again with centralized services right?

Just take any one of the horror stories where PayPal has shutdown/frozen accounts. People have been frozen for months/years/indefinitely with funds they need to live and feed their families.

You don’t need to force PayPal to unlock you account/funds if you can take your seed phrase/private key and access my funds on any other wallet.

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

#386

Post by grumbel »

AOsborn wrote: post #378
grumbel wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a quick and easy way to dramatically increase their user base. At the moment nobody can complete with Steam because Steam has most of their games. If there would be a way to transfer games between services, services would have to compete and what services they offer instead of just relying on user lock-in.

> At the moment nobody can complete with Steam because Steam has most of their games. Exactly? You're right. Which is why Steam will never allow this from their side.

That might not be up for Steam to decide, first-sale doctrine already exist as law in many countries, what's missing is the enforcement of it for digital goods:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/steam-should-let-users-rese...

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

#387

Post by cinntaile »

nkrisc wrote: post #363
cinntaile wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would they ever do that, though? That would allow third party resale of digital copies of their games which would eat away their sales of games. It’s one of the many reasons games are digitally sold now: there’s no physical artifact the owner can sell to someone else. Why would Ubisoft intentionally create a way for homes to be resold without them getting a cut?

I don't expect the incumbents, like Ubisoft, to do that. But you can definitely program NFTs to automatically give a cut of the sale each time the NFT is sold. It doesn't make too much sense for second hand digital games, you'll likely be able to buy the games as long as the platform is alive. In a situation such as this one it could have helped resolve it though. It would have been even better if Ubisoft didn't just delete the account, but that's apparently not the world we live in. Hopefully the owner of the deleted account can send in his receipts and get his account back.

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

#388

Post by Illniyar »

ipaddr wrote: post #168
Jach wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam is already 18 years old, where is your confidence they won't make it another 20 coming from?

That's a good point but odds are gmail won't be around in 20 years. The most popular email 20 years ago was aol later hotmail. Most popular search yahoo, altavista are gone. ICQ is mostly gone. Myspace is gone. Facebook is dying slowly hopefully to be replaced with some form in the meta world. To make it 18 years is special but it's going to take a lot of reinvention to keep up for the next 20 years. They have the be…

ICQ is very much alive, and popular in Russia for example.

Hotmail transitioned to Microsoft outlook.com, and you can still use your hotmail domain email, even if you can't register new ones.

As far as I know aol mail is still available.

Myspace is still live, including all the old pages and you can probably listen to music uploaded to it in the past as well.

Losing popularity does not mean shutting down.

Yahoo search and Altavista are not the same, since you did not upload information to them nor bought something. Though Yahoo search is still alive anyway.

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

#389

Post by lobocinza »

conradludgate wrote: post #180
pdonis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are games we're talking about. They're recreation. For people to be demanding legislation because a recreational activity isn't set up just the way they like it, when they knew the terms perfectly well before they paid their money, is not "participating in cultural works".

Why should recreational works not be protected? Isn't enjoying artwork purely recreational, except we put a greater deal of care into preserving and displaying the historical works. A lot of games fall into the same categories of digital interactive art. Especially if its mostly a single player game, I may want to re-experience that game later, much like I might watch a DVD or VHS I still own from my childhood. Of co…

I'm glad that people worry about preserving all forms of cultural works but I personally attribute a lesser value to games, cinema and TV.

Keep in mind that players leave long before servers stop working. To me games are more of medium than an object and the artifacts left behind like stories, wikis, screenshots, videos and memes are of a higher importance and also easier to preserve. Let's say that you don't need to have a running Coliseum to understand how it works and it's societal implications.

Also most of what I see in games and movies are things originated or preserved long ago in books. And what games and movies do is summarize things and add action scenes and emotional filler.

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

#390

Post by Closi »

Cederfjard wrote: post #356
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.

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.

This is a key question from multiple angles - a few specific ones:

1) Does Steam want to allow you to download games to their platform when you have bought it from the lowest cost seller, when they will take zero cut of the revenue?

2) Do games sales platforms want to make it so you can leave their platform en-masse with zero friction?

3) Do developers really want to lose control of being able to revoke keys (e.g. cheaters) or lose the ability to stop the transfer of the license to other players? (i.e. block resale). And if developers / game sellers retain the ability to revoke keys as part of the design of the blockchain contract, how does that avoid the original situation where Ubisoft is revoking access to inactive accounts?

4) What does it mean if I lose access to my account in an NFT world? If someone steals my account can it be recovered? Can I get my games back?

Post reply on HN