Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity • Hacker News Board

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

#521

Post by user-the-name » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #408

user-the-name wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The idea that NFTs somehow help in these kind of situations is utter nonsense. Sure, if Ubisoft minted an NFT and give it to you, they couldn't delete the NFT itself. However , it is always up to Ubisoft or whoever else is using NFTs whether they want to honour that NFT or not. You can present them with the NFT, and they can say "Hmmm... no." An NFT is like a key to a house. You can use it to open the door u…

It'll be bad PR if they don't honor it, though. Purchasers of the NFT don't know the original holder got banned, and they have every reason to assume buying the NFT from that person will give them whatever privilege or cosmetic it's supposed to grant them in-game. Enough people don't have that happen and complain about it loudly enough and Ubisoft will feel pressure to change their policies to honor it. It'd be a stu…

This is true for any system, not just one based on NFTs.

NFTs add nothing here.

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

#522

Post by ehsankia » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 2:26 AM UTC

falcor84 wrote: post #271

ehsankia wrote: post #145

Ubisoft claims accounts with games on it will never be up for deletion. I could see this being a bug, but could also just simply be that... the person is confused and that specific account didn't actually have a game on it? Could it be a different account maybe? That seems a more likely and simple explanation to me, and this right now just comes down to a he said / she said. Obviously it's not great that the ToS has…

I don't know what your experience with Ubisoft is, but based on mine, I would always default to mistrusting them.

It's fine to mistrust them, I also generally stay away from UPlay, but I still don't like taking accusations like this as facts without more evidence. And if it is indeed true that the person did buy games on that account, there would be evidence to prove it, and I do not see a world where Ubisoft wouldn't restore the account.

It just feels strange to jump to pitchforks though based on so little.

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

#523

Post by CryptoBanker » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 2:42 AM UTC

s_dev wrote: post #381

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 purchas…

Actually C&C generals is still available on the Origin store, but only as part of a package

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

#524

Post by 10x-dev » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #111

10x-dev wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same argument as vigilante justice.

Sure, but taking this to its logical extreme, it seems like I could justify any act as long as it’s also legal. While I totally agree with the advice of “it’s illegal so you probably shouldn’t do it”, I don’t think it’s a terribly interesting conversation philosophically. Deferring to human law in these discussions feels like an existential cop-out. I think the question is substantially more interesting if you preten…

You might as well remove the legality of it from the question then and focus on the moral aspect.

In the case of downloading a copy of the game you own, I don't have a moral issue with that.

However, I don't think that generalizes to any digital good. I'd say it is morally wrong to make copies of a digital good where an additional instance gets you some benefits. For example, downloading an additional digital ticket to a limited virtual event, thereby gaining access for free, or any instance where the original creator loses a sale and someone gets to enjoy or profit from said copy of the digital good.

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

#525

Post by kirso » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 7:09 AM UTC

isaiahg wrote: post #487

cinntaile wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And probably the most complicated solution

"Have fun staying poor"... the most used argument to do something with NFTs.

Coming back to the main topic, I would suggest looking into Lateral thinking with withered technology. Nobody cares what technology is used for consumer facing products. Nobody cares if its web1 or web25. What people care about is usefulness and purpose.

Cutting-edge tech has always been here, but the break-throughs are mostly coming from cross-pollinating existing tech and remixing something into a better, cheaper, faster version.

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

#526

Post by jbverschoor » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:31 AM UTC

smileybarry wrote: post #401

jbverschoor wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if those items are suddenly would be available as NFTs, they're worth a lot more. Now it's just tough luck for the people... Old agreement about destroying someone's digital assets. People who want their items "back" are forced to play/pay again..

That depends, Ubisoft Quartz is on its own blockchain IIRC and there's no guarantee you can submit transactions without a Ubi account, or even that the signing key isn't just stored in your Ubi account. Also, just to check on which blockchain it's on, I tried opening their FAQ page to see a "not available in your region" message (despite the Ubi store being available here, Israel). Hilarious.

True.. I guess that's also why there's not much adoption of their initiatives.

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

#527

Post by cinntaile » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 12:29 PM UTC

jhanschoo wrote: post #459

smorgusofborg wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to admit the NFT is a positive here since you could prove ownership that a site like archive.org could prove they could verify.. So an independent third party could have more ways to navigate IP law and be able to replace failing services, serve older content the site wants to forget, etc.

An email receipt in your Google inbox suffices for most people.

Yup but that's a manual process. An NFT could help automate the whole process.

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

#528

Post by lobocinza » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 1:08 PM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #450

lobocinza wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost impossible to buy a DRM free book.

While I kind of want to give a snarky answer of "actually, buying an ebook without DRM is exactly as easy as it is as buying one with, the trick is just finding one without DRM," the truth is that this is dependent entirely on the publisher. I buy a lot of technical books from Pragmatic Programmers, which are all DRM-free, and I believe they're not alone in that. My small press fiction publisher doesn't use DRM; Tor…

I worded it badly. It's as you said. In my experience if I want to buy a given X book it's almost certain that I will not be able to purchase it in a non-DRM format. Because DRM became de facto in the industry and only a small share of titles are available to purchase without it.

> People who self-publish through Amazon are given a choice whether or not to apply DRM to their books.

Didn't now Amazon also sold non-DRM. I guess the authors of the books that I was enticed to buy opted for it.

> Tor Books, the biggest sf/fantasy publisher, doesn't use DRM, either.

Have read short stories published there. Content generally is good and innovative.

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

#529

Post by Closi » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

TimJRobinson wrote: post #425

Cederfjard wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do companies do anything in the consumers interest? Competition. You don't see it now, but once many games allow you to resell the skins or game itself, and gamers get used to that, publishers that don't allow it will look evil. Coordination between many companies is an exceptionally difficult problem without blockchains. This is what NFTs solve in a simple way - a neutral platform that every party can easily int…

> Coordination between many companies is an exceptionally difficult problem without blockchains.

Before we solutionise to blockchain though we should work out how we want the world to work.

This is my main issue with discourse about NFTs and Blockchain - it gets banded around as a technical solution to solve everything before anyone has even started to think of what the requirements are for the problem we are trying to solve.

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

#530

Post by yunwal » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #371

tdrdt wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying people give a fuck it is legally accurate. But since nobody ever reads the terms and conditions this could help to give a quick understanding of what you are paying for. Everybody knows that renting a car is different than buying a car.

You're spot on, it might not fix the entire problem but it's a good start and can help waking people up. This rent economy is horseshit. "You will own nothing and be happy". In reality we keep paying for things we never get to own, then one day have them arbitrarily taken away from us if the company feels like it. Remember how we used to buy things and then they were ours? Like the music we paid for. Now people have…

The music example is more acceptable though, because you don't pay a 1-time fee to own a song anymore.

When you "buy" a game, you pay a 1-time fee with the implicit calculation that you'll own that game for enough time for it to be worth the cost.

When you listen to a song on Spotify, there's no expectation that that song will be available next month, and it doesn't matter, since you didn't pay for the song.