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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

#391

Post by cedilla »

throwawaycities wrote: post #385
cedilla wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand the frustration with centralized services. What I don't understand is how an embedded program on a blockchain service would guarantee my access to a Ubisoft service or game.

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

#392

Post by smileybarry »

pdonis wrote: post #54
Hokusai wrote: post #47

Earlier 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. [...] you want to get the government involved? For games?

That's an absurd argument, just because it's "games" it does not invalidate the argument here. Would you not raise the same concern if Apple/Google closed your account tomorrow and you lost access to all of your movies? They also count as "recreation".

Or one day, Microsoft/Apple deem your account to be causing abuse and terminate it. Your Windows license/macOS data is bound to it, and your computer is suddenly unusable because logging in returns an error. You're bound by a EULA and they're fully within their right to do this, you're just licensing the software. Would you still think "I will just not pay them money and go to someone else"?

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

#393

Post by lobocinza »

brnt wrote: post #241
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…

> I generally hate getting the government involved in things, but Why do you hate your elected representatives safeguarding fairness against large corporations like this?

Because it's flawed. It's an easy bet to say that regulation will end up being ineffective and/or worsening things.

Asking for regulation is kind of "gnome underpants" plan where regulate -> X -> profit. X is extremely complicated.

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

#394

Post by smileybarry »

paxys wrote: post #28

I paid extra for a disc version of the PS5 for exactly this reason. If I buy a game today I want to be able to play it 20 years from now. I can bet money that none of the mainstream digital stores of today will be operational by then.

A few months ago I pulled my PS1 collection from storage to rip to ISOs, for emulation and backup. I was too late as the discs, despite being in fully opaque containers, were damaged and partly unreadable, one disc was 50% unreadable. And this is all for emulation -- if I wanted to play on a console I'd need a modchip to read CD-Rs, so if you backed up your Blu-Ray PS5 discs today, you wouldn't be able to play them on a legitimate console in the future.

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

#395

Post by user-the-name »

cinntaile wrote: post #384
Lazare wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ubisoft is under no obligation to honour your transfer of ownership of the NFT. They can just stop accepting it as valid any time they like.

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

#396

Post by smileybarry »

NeoVeles wrote: post #164
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?

In that sense, Steam is not tied to a single hardware platform. They are a bit more platform agnostic and that means they can keep moving with the times. Steam doesn't require a custom steam PC using proprietary hardware. A good example of these online store going down would be the Wii and Wii U/3DS stores. The Wii store is already gone - it lasted 13 years. The Wii U/3DS stores will no longer accept any payments sta…

MS are a special case as they keep the Xbox 360 store & library up for BC reasons, even adding older games to the catalog when they get publisher rights. I would actually trust them to keep it online. (And Sony recently changed their mind on shutting down the PS3 store and are keeping the PS3 download CDN up)

As for Nintendo, I'm unsure but optimistic -- the Switch is their first console that seems planned to be (able to be) used with 100% digital purchases, I'm not sure if games will be buyable forever but I bet they'll be downloadable.

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

#397

Post by rozab »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #313
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…

>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…

Receipts are already a universally accepted proof of purchase, nobody is questioning that the games were purchased. This is a solved problem.

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

#398

Post by NicoJuicy »

usrusr wrote: post #373
NicoJuicy wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they wanted to allow an open second hand market for nonphysical game copies, where you can separate out single games from your account, I'd say that the NFT approach might be one of the easier ways to do it. Downright practical. I'd even go so far as suggesting that this could be one of the least nonsensical NFT use cases. But all that does not change the fact that they can't possibly want a second hand market. Le…

That's not even remotely true. Companies have laws to abide to per country, that's not even possible to implement now.

Eg. In Europe reselling is possible because of a court order put into law in many cases. They don't like that, so it's not done in the US.

And in this case, you are ignoring basic licensing logic: group licenses for Enterprise, discounts, beta licenses, ...

Add usually, NFT fanatics are ignoring all logic of the real world and just say "NFT's are better" lol.

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

#399

Post by Duckapple »

ivegotnoaccount wrote: post #289
akavel wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://gog.com has (nearly?) all games DRM-free, so you can backup (and also actually torrent I believe) any of the games, that's why I choose to buy from them.

The question may be silly, but how does GOG handle multiplayer ? - Are players that bought the game on GOG able to play with those that bought it on steam/Uplay/other when lobbies are involved - Are there DRMs for online play that have lobbies ? If so, how are they handled ? Also, their list is sadly quite limited it seems, for the games many play. No GTA V, no God of War, no Red Dead Redemption, no Call of Duty, no…

It really depends on implementation in-game. I think GOG has worked on API for crossplay with Steam for any game developers who are interested.

In general, if the developer wants DRM, the developer gets DRM, so the options on GOG will probably always be years behind other platforms and usually not include multiplayer experiences, in terms of AAA games, that is.

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

#400

Post by simion314 »

Netcob wrote: post #331
jorvi wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

A law to force them to partially refund people would create the insentive to no longer be "trigger happy".
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