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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

#501

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #460
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno - when MP3s became thing, in my country you were allowed to convert your CD to MP3. But you need the CD to prove your ownership (technically - I don't know if there ever was a court case where somebody produced the CDs). It seems to me in that sense a NFT could help - you can get the MP3s anywhere, but the NFT proves you actually paid for it. Of course there would have to be a way to get the Ubisoft games, or…

I don't get how this would be even remotely helpful in real life. It's just a solution for a manmade problem. I know there are a lot of manmade problems getting circumvented by code but this time it's just all on us.

Well you could own digital goods without having to rely on centralized services that can cancel your accounts.

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

#502

Post by YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo »

bradstewart wrote: post #465
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

export nfts? doesn't that make it fungable?

I assume "export" here means transfer it to a wallet that the user controls, rather than Ubisoft. You can change ownership of the token without changing the token itself, so its still non-fungible.

Their ToS doesn't give me ownership of the nft that would be fraud.

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

#503

Post by YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #501
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how this would be even remotely helpful in real life. It's just a solution for a manmade problem. I know there are a lot of manmade problems getting circumvented by code but this time it's just all on us.

Well you could own digital goods without having to rely on centralized services that can cancel your accounts.

I don't think thats feasible in a fiat world.

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

#504

Post by Jach »

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…

Nintendo is an interesting case, because while the stores are gone/going away (though there was a Wii->Wii U transfer period), a lot of the games themselves aren't gone, and what you already downloaded will continue to work so long as you don't delete it. More importantly Nintendo itself is still around (and will probably be in another 20 years -- there are many long-lived entertainment companies) it's just that they (and others who re-release on the new stores) want you to keep re-buying the same games over and over.

I have a similar desire to paxys in that I want to be able to play most of my games in 20 years, where such a concept is even valid (I do sometimes enjoy multiplayer games and other things "of the moment" where I have no expectations of playing the same game tomorrow due to a sweeping patch or upgrade or shutting down, let alone in 20 years). It's just that digital store risk, especially of Steam, is the least of my worries.

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

#505

Post by throwawaycities »

acdha wrote: post #474
throwawaycities wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is the game distributed and executing on the blockchain? If not, you're close to understanding how NFTs very expensively do not solve this problem: the blockchain state doesn't remove Ubisoft's control of their software and servers. What would help is a legal contract with user-friendly terms (which they could offer now if they wanted to, but they don't) or consumer protection regulation (which has no need for a bloc…

> Is the game distributed and executing on the blockchain? If not, you're close to understanding how NFTs very expensively do not solve this problem…

Games can be deployed on IPFS right? Access to play games on IPFS be trustless, such as holders of NFTs, right?

That is not the only way to employ blockchain technology to avoid a centralized company removing access to games you paid for, but not knowing your familiarity with the current state of the technology that is low hanging fruit.

Also let’s not pretend there isn’t a legal contract between Ubisoft and users, but it’s that very contract that gives them the legal right to take away access to games you have paid for by the rules they dictate. Even if Ubisoft breached the contract, no one is going to hire a lawyer to sue Ubisoft over breach of contract over the cost of a game…don’t forget to take into account legal fees and costs when calling the blockchain expensive.

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

#506

Post by CopperWing »

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…

> The question may be silly, but how does GOG handle multiplayer ?

It depends: some games implement multiplayer through their publisher's private servers (e.g. Paradox games) so users can play together regardless of the shop they bought the game from. Some others (e.g. Dying Light) reimplement multiplayer replacing Steam facilities with GOG Galaxy. In that case interoperability is not possible maily because GOG Galaxy doesn't implement the same anticheat system. Finally some other games whose multiplayer is based on Steam, had the multiplayer removed in the version sold on GOG (e.g. modern XCOM games).

> Also, their list is sadly quite limited it seems, for the games many play.

Nowadays the game market offers more than just AAA games and for people like me who stopped buying DRM-protected games and are not interested in multiplayer there are still many good games to enjoy. Some AA and AAA games are also published on GOG after a while, so it's just matter to wait and support GOG's business model if you don't like DRM.

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

#507

Post by joveian »

josephcsible wrote: post #434
tjoff wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will concede that the meaning might has changed with time. But at a point DRM was synonymous with online-checks and/or invasive spying and infecting the operating system. And that holds in spirit in today given all the criticism about DRM. It has never been about the inconvenience of entering a serial number (even though that indeed is a bit inconvenient it is most certainly not the source of the (justified) DRM ha…

> The license key you entered and the following offline check when installing from CD/disk was/is considered something entirely different. There was never a time when the definition of DRM didn't include license key checks.

The one exception to this is that a key for multiplayer access in mostly single player games is sometimes not included in the DRM definition. GOG has a number of games with codes needed for online access via central server; this is needed to be able to ban players for abuse and is still technically DRM but I personally consider it different type of thing when the game is primarily offline. Best is when there are multiplayer alternatives to the central server that don't require a key but that is fairly rare. Personally I don't use multiplayer anyway.

All in all, the experience from GOG is much more customer friendly than other game stores (there are only a few other tiny stores that I know about that are DRM-free and don't require their client to be able to buy and/or download games). They aren't perfect but you can download the installer directly from the website if you want or use a client if you want. Games work fully offline with no code needed. You can refund a game for essentially any reason within 30 days even if you have downloaded and played the game (there is some unspecified limit to number of refunds but it isn't tiny if you are just refunding a few you don't like). I'm not 100% certain but I'm fairly sure they don't ever remove inactive accounts.

Unfortunately, the value of DRM-free is often reduced somewhat by the "release a buggy mess and if it sells well enough fix it eventually" philosophy that most developers have these days. Not having access to updates can worst case make the game unplayable and often makes it less pleasant (of course, there are also cases where updates make it worse :/). So DRM-free isn't a complete solution for not being able to access an account, but at least once you have played a game you can play the same version again even if you can't access your account.

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

#508

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

derefr wrote: post #464
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need NFTs for that. The proof of ownership is just a receipt. It could even be made verifiable by adding a digital signature signed by Ubisofts public key. Still, NFTs are not needed here.

You're right, you don't need an immutable ledger of visible IP licensing rights if that's all you want to accomplish. But presumably, in a "legal piracy is commonplace, Steam goes out of business" scenario, the studios producing the games would still want to make the games verify your license ownership against something — e.g. to make sure that you're only using your license for one concurrent "seat", rather than usi…

Perhaps, but since the premise of the solution is that Ubisoft must be legally required to provide a certain service to the current bearer of the token, then it seems overkill to put this on a distributed database system with a complicated consensus model. If Ubisoft is already legally required to recognize it, then surely they can also be required to host a service for moving ownership or maintaining a usage counter in a publicly verifiable manner. Still, NFTs are not the solution here.

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

#509

Post by tjoff »

josephcsible wrote: post #434
tjoff wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will concede that the meaning might has changed with time. But at a point DRM was synonymous with online-checks and/or invasive spying and infecting the operating system. And that holds in spirit in today given all the criticism about DRM. It has never been about the inconvenience of entering a serial number (even though that indeed is a bit inconvenient it is most certainly not the source of the (justified) DRM ha…

> The license key you entered and the following offline check when installing from CD/disk was/is considered something entirely different. There was never a time when the definition of DRM didn't include license key checks.

Well, you could argue that requiring to login to download a game is DRM as well.

While to some degree that is technically true but it is not what the whole DRM debate has been about.

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

#510

Post by qeternity »

mikegreenberg wrote: post #443
qeternity wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can sell my NFTs on marketplaces completely independent of ubisoft. Even on a public chain, this isn’t true. It’s shocking to me how many people in this space really don’t know the basics. An NFT is just a contract that implements ERC-721/ERC-1155. I can implement restrictions around the transfer functions however I like.

You're missing the point that this would motivate a marketplace where Ubisoft is not the only portal for these NFT-owned games. nftgamingportal.com could exist which accepts these NFTs (in addition to many others) despite whatever restrictions Ubisoft decides to impose (which they are free to do... they own the walled garden).

No, you’re missing the point. That’s just not how NFTs work.

I can create NFTs that cannot be traded on other marketplaces.

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