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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

#511
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.

The PS5's optical drive is paired with its motherboard[1]. If you replace it, even if you take the disk drive from another PS5, it will not be able to read your PS5 game. I imagine that 20 years from now you are going to have a hard time finding a working PS5 with its original disk drive. [1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/PlayStation+5+Teardown/13828...

It's not just that, a lot of games today are assuming some server somewhere is up regardless of single-player vs multiplayer.

Between that and day-1 patches that made games playable, the data on the disk will almost certainly not be enough to play games in 20 years

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

#512
post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 familiarit…

> Games can be deployed on IPFS right?

They could, but IPFS is not a blockchain and putting it on IPFS would be a competitive disadvantage since you'd still need to pay for hosting but your users would see lower performance than competing options.

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

No. If it's on IPFS, it's globally accessible to everyone on the internet. You could host encrypted blobs but publishers are unlikely to do that because it would mean that any breach of any purchased decryption key would mean that people who did not purchase it could download the same thing paid customers get, and there'd be no way to rotate the keys without breaking access for paying customers.

Moreover, IPFS would only matter if the game is either completely standalone or allows you to run your own servers. If that's not true, what really matters for most people is whether the servers will allow you to login, where again Ubisoft would have complete control about whether they care about your NFT. In the absence of a signed contract, that's “hahaha, no”.

> 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.

That is rather the point: Ubisoft has those terms because they created the game and the legal systems in most of the world give them a lot of control over how they grant access to their work. Blockchains aren't magic pixie dust which allow you to redesign their business how you want it to work and, as we've already seen from this same company, if they chose to use a blockchain they would structure the terms to preserve the same favorable position they currently enjoy.

If, as I do, you think that games should have resale rights or there should be some required process & means of recourse before terminating access, what you want are laws. Copyright is a legal creation and your elected officials can adjust the terms for it. Sure, that's won't happen without hard work but a blockchain has no authority to make anything happen at all so why not spend your effort on something which has a chance of working?

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

#513
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's correct. If you disconnect your xbox from the net, the game will still be installed (from the disc), and you'll be able to play it. Everything will still work after the Xbox store shuts down. You just won't get any updates or DLC.

This statement is not accurate. There are games that ship as licenses rather than binary blobs on discs.

What kind of numbers are we talking here? All of the 15 or so games I own have had the game on the disc.

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

#515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Game services aren't allowed to give away games for free. The game you own on Steam is a different one than the one you own on GoG. So it requires the publisher's permission to allow this kind of import which in turn means it's rarely available. Also this kind of import essentially allows you to duplicate games, as you can import a Steam game into a GoG account and than sell the GoG account while still keeping the ga…

????? Adding a non-steam game on Steam is not transferring it, it's a simple shortcut. Your GoG game will not be installable through Steam. Your Ubisoft game will still launch uplay. It's a damn shortcut. I'm sorry you're in denial about your NFTs being worthless, but you ought to cut your losses now.

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

#516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Game services aren't allowed to give away games for free. The game you own on Steam is a different one than the one you own on GoG. So it requires the publisher's permission to allow this kind of import which in turn means it's rarely available. Also this kind of import essentially allows you to duplicate games, as you can import a Steam game into a GoG account and than sell the GoG account while still keeping the ga…

> Game services aren’t allowed to give away games for free.

I mean, they obviously are, which is about 95% of the reason I even have an account on EGS, but…

> With NFTs you have a framework of ownership and both the entry on Steam and the one on GoG become the same thing.

Which is why neither Steam nor GoG would have any interest in adopting those NFTs.

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

#517

Decentralized ownership and file storage using NFTs on low energy blockchains would solve this. But no, let's keep complaining about the same problems over and over while we keep chanting that crypto is evil and can't be used to solve said problems.

You can't just say "blockchain" and magically solve it.

You used to be able to. "Web3" is the magic word now.

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

#518
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…

> 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…

> But it’s probably better to think of an ERC20 (tokens) and ERC721 (NFTs) as self executing code on the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Right, and Ubisoft is making NFTs right now, that will use that self-executing code to implement customer unfriendly restrictions on who can own and transfer the NFTs.

If your self-executing smart contract says "you lose the games when Ubisoft bans you or goes out of business", then you've gained nothing. "Ah", you say, "but what if Ubisoft decided to be nice and customer friendly?"

But this is Ubisoft. That's not going to happen. :)

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

#519
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it unnecessarily complicated though? I feel like while “stop paying more” should be an easy process, “permanently lose access to a thing I already paid for” should be difficult in order to guard against unexpected things, since it is a potentially irreversible event with negative monetary consequences for the user.

Exactly. I found out that I can't remove games from my Steam account even if I want to. I can only hide them. I figure that's intentional so people can't change their mind about games they've removed and give grief to Steam support. It also helps prevent accidental removal, or malicious removal (e.g. you're still logged in and your kid is upset with you and tries to remove your favorite Steam games from your account)…

Steam seems to have a "remove from account" option. Does that not work? Does it depend on where you live maybe?

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

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is true. The assumption I make is that we would be living in a scenario where they would honour the ownership transfer. I'm just saying it's possible for NFTs to work like this, not that this will actually happen.

If you are living under the assumption that they would honour ownership, you don't need NFTs in the first place. The whole thing can be much more efficiently implemented without them.
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