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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

#481
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…

A correctly implemented NFT would mean that he could still sell the game to someone else, he should still be able to take the NFT of his games with him and make a new account theoretically. If they provide no way for him to auto export his NFTs then nobody should bother buying NFTs of games since as you're suggesting, it's pointless.

How is that different than me just being able to transfer a software license to another account?

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

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have pointed to the fact that Ubisoft is using a separate chain, but I want to point out that even on Ethereum you're not guaranteed to have the kind of universal access that you want. Smart contracts are code, and an Ethereum contract can be coded to rely on a centralized service or to only allow selling through a specific marketplace. Additionally, even on Ethereum Ubisoft could monitor the sales and reject…

There's no commercial incentive for any other game to integrate with Ubisoft's NFTs. Doing so would be a pure act of charity with no upside to those companies, and with a ton of liability since Ubisoft would be allowed to mess with those NFTs which would now be part of the customer experience on a separate game What about bootstrapping a new game? If you were launching a new game and wanted to steal marketshare from…

It wouldn't make a lot of sense financially. The cost to create all the assets, and stay in sync with Ubisofts asset database would be high. Your only incentive would be to try and capitalize on future sales, but without any guarantee that they'd buy the asset from you.

You'd basically only be appealing to people who are bought into the hype...without getting any guarantees in returns.

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

#483
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does your correct implementation force Ubisoft to do something against their will? If they want to block someone, opening another account will work only to the extent that they don't really care — otherwise their terms of service would be meaningless since everyone could just crank out sock puppets.

That's the whole point, the producer doesn't have control and therefore you own what you bought, instead of renting it.

No post body was provided.

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

#484
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…

A correctly implemented NFT would mean that he could still sell the game to someone else, he should still be able to take the NFT of his games with him and make a new account theoretically. If they provide no way for him to auto export his NFTs then nobody should bother buying NFTs of games since as you're suggesting, it's pointless.

What's your definition of "correctly implemented"? Because the NFT platform Ubisoft went with has all kinds of restrictions on it, and I imagine they consider it to be "correctly implemented."

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

#485

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.

This has been around since May without getting taken down?

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

#486
post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't getting the media, the problem is the license. If you get Windows and MS has blocked your key, it doesn't matter that you own the key: Windows will talk to their server and the server will say "that's not a valid license I don't care who owns it" Likewise, it doesn't matter where you get a game from, unless you break the DCMA and modify the binary, DRM enabled games will phone home to the "game serv…

> Likewise, it doesn't matter where you get a game from, unless you break the DCMA and modify the binary, DRM enabled games will phone home to the "game service provider" to verify your license. If you own the license , then downloading a pre-cracked derivative work of the installation media also isn't illegal (provided that the cracker has put the crack itself in the public domain!) To resume the analogy: Microsoft…

This is wrong on so many counts my head is spinning.

Your license defines exactly what software it's a license for, I guarantee you "pirated copy" is not part of that.

You're also making a copy of illegally distributed software (not just cracking that's a problem, distribution is too...), which opens you up to liability, since again, your license doesn't cover that.

And to top it all off, you're still not going to get the full functionality of the game if you just crack the software, multiplayer still requires their servers (and before I get the default reply of "I don't care about multiplayer", the fact the most played games are largely multiplayer indicates most people do)

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

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But supposedly a “correctly implemented” NFT would solve the problem.

It's one solution to the problem, but it's not the only one.

And probably the most complicated solution

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

#488
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A correctly implemented NFT would mean that he could still sell the game to someone else, he should still be able to take the NFT of his games with him and make a new account theoretically. If they provide no way for him to auto export his NFTs then nobody should bother buying NFTs of games since as you're suggesting, it's pointless.

How does your correct implementation force Ubisoft to do something against their will? If they want to block someone, opening another account will work only to the extent that they don't really care — otherwise their terms of service would be meaningless since everyone could just crank out sock puppets.

> If they want to block someone

The point of NFT is to use ownership to provide access. If they use another system, like an account system, well obviously it's no longer NFT and then obviously it no longer has the advantage of NFT. Even if they don't use NFT to provide direct access but instead access is provided behind another wall (like an account), the other advantage of being able to transfer its ownership to someone else is still there, and again if they block that, well obviously, they really don't support NFT at all.

An NFT is not a receipt, it's the actual ownership.

The real question is whether any games will ever really support NFT, that's a whole other question. It will takes times before we find that out as currently, with the amount of cash it bring for barely providing anything, it's not clear whether an actual full featured game will comes out or it will all be glorified visualizer.

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

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You write a book and nobody buys it or reads it. What's your compensation then?

The guarantee that if anyone buys or reads it in the future, I can claim my compensation. Otherwise I have to create a perpetual begging campaign and be at everyone's mercy.

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

#490
post #488
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does your correct implementation force Ubisoft to do something against their will? If they want to block someone, opening another account will work only to the extent that they don't really care — otherwise their terms of service would be meaningless since everyone could just crank out sock puppets.

> If they want to block someone The point of NFT is to use ownership to provide access. If they use another system, like an account system, well obviously it's no longer NFT and then obviously it no longer has the advantage of NFT. Even if they don't use NFT to provide direct access but instead access is provided behind another wall (like an account), the other advantage of being able to transfer its ownership to som…

In other words, an NFT cannot force Ubisoft to do anything they don't want to do and if they do want to allow this they don't need an NFT. Since blockchains are too inefficient to store content and the publishers are unlikely to put anything important on a system with no fraud recovery mechanism[1], there will always be a set of services which are what actually determine whether you can use the game and the only thing which matters will be the policy they enforce there.

> An NFT is not a receipt, it's the actual ownership.

This is incorrect for most NFTs since they lack a contract assigning ownership rights. Ubisoft certainly could add that but, again, why wouldn’t they do that now if it’s something they want?

1. Even if a blockchain could be efficient enough to publish the client software, few companies are going to allow their software to be published somewhere which allows anyone in the world to download it without a mechanism to prevent a single leaked key from making it irrecoverably free to anyone on the internet.

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