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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

#131

Post by emodendroket »

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…

> If they ban me, do I lose my thousands of dollars of games?

You absolutely do.

Anyway, I agree with you. Digital marketplaces are becoming more and more important and certainly I'm sure I have a lot of money in Steam, Kindle, and various other services. It'd be nice to move away from the Wild West phase given how much money's sloshing around at this point.

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

#132

Post by emodendroket »

sefrost wrote: post #29
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 wouldn’t feel any guilt about pirating the content I bought on any of those services if my account was taken from me for inactivity. I’d be interested to hear the argument about why that would be wrong though.

I wouldn't feel guilty but I just do not want to bother. Half the reason I pay is I don't want the trouble.

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

#133

Post by raz32dust »

emodendroket wrote: post #131
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…

> If they ban me, do I lose my thousands of dollars of games? You absolutely do. Anyway, I agree with you. Digital marketplaces are becoming more and more important and certainly I'm sure I have a lot of money in Steam, Kindle, and various other services. It'd be nice to move away from the Wild West phase given how much money's sloshing around at this point.

You can still play the games without steam (I often play without internet connection). But of course you'll miss out on a lot of things (multiplayer, achievements etc.) which might be important to you.

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

#134

Post by pdonis »

michaelmrose wrote: post #114
pdonis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's not an alternative way to buy them that does give you that confidence That doesn't sound to me like a reason for legislation. It sounds to me like a reason for competition. But for there to be competition, customers have to be willing to put their money where their mouth is. If there were a competitor that charged, say, 20% more for a product that included the confidence you want, would you pay it?

Competition is very nearly worthless as far as ensuring consumer choice. The market tends to trend towards a small number of players who all act collectively with or without the benefit of collaboration to serve their own interests. The customer may have preferences along n dimensions where n is a very large number of choices and a small number of choices wherein their ability to effect the distribution of characteri…

> Competition is very nearly worthless as far as ensuring consumer choice.

It is if the consumers don't demand choice, yes. Which, as a number of other responses in this thread have shown, appears to be the case in this market. The people who are willing to not buy games distributed on terms unfavorable to them are statistical outliers (at least one such person has posted elsewhere in this thread) and don't have any significant effect on the incentives faced by the distributors.

> Regulations force all players into a reasonable space

Into what some unelected government bureaucrats decide is a "reasonable space", perhaps. But any such regulation is far more likely to make things worse, not better, for consumers. Look up "regulatory capture". The game distributors have much deeper pockets and a much more concentrated incentive to simply buy the regulations they want.

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

#135

Post by ipaddr »

pdonis wrote: post #84
alasdair_ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terms are not a negotiated contract - they are dictated by one side and even if they are read by the purchaser, the implications of the terms may not be obvious. Many/most people will not understand that after paying hundreds of dollars for games, their games could suddenly be taken away from them without recourse. For a ridiculous example, imagine there was a clause buried in the fineprint that allowed the store…

> The terms are not a negotiated contract That doesn't mean they aren't a contract. They're simply a contract where your only options as the buyer are to buy or not to buy. That said, a unilateral contract like this can be treated somewhat differently by courts. See below. > removing the right to play a game you have bought with money because you haven’t played it “enough” (according to the vendor) may also be consid…

Terms are not a contract or a type of contract. Were you instructed to consult your legal team before signing the contract?

What you never signed with a witness and a notary?

So if they put in a term that said you agree to give them your house or 500 you would have to?

Terms of service are the rules outlined by the service provider. Breaking these could get your service cut and you would have a hard time finding a legal recourse.

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

#136

Post by _3u10 »

Hokusai wrote: post #33
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 don't really care too much about what the Terms and Services say It does not matter even if you care. You do not have negotiating power to change them. It is a 'my way or highway' situation. And the government should be involved, you alone cannot change the Terms of Service, but your country can create laws to protect you from thieves, whenever they steal physical or digital goods. If you don't like your governme…

Yes you do. I had a ToS with an anti competitive clause in it, no reselling, was told they needed to transfer all our customers, etc, or they and us could get fined for illegal reselling.

Phoned their regulator, was told to register as a reseller, and call back if we still had issues.

After the registration had been finalized we contacted our new wholesaler, all that came of it was being unable to add new accounts for a few months.

The next company we had the issue with you could basically hear the face palming on the phone why they had allowed a registered reseller to open an account that didn’t allow reselling, and whether they would allow us to continue reselling or whether we should do a conference call with at .

It was basically one of those pray I do not alter our agreement further moments.

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

#137

Post by dento »

pdonis wrote: post #89
Hokusai wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you want to get the government involved? For games? The government is already involved, I cannot copy the games from my friend because the government does not allow me to do it. The government protects Ubisoft from me hacking them, or from paying in a fraudulent way. The government is fully involved in all the steps, I just want that my interests are represented in that involvement. > Good luck with that. I do not…

> I cannot copy the games from my friend because the government does not allow me to do it. No, you can't do it because the seller of the game does not allow you to do it. There is no law requiring sellers to lock down their games with DRM or other forms of restriction. > I do not live in the USA. So what? Are you saying you can magically get access to this website without Y Combinator's cooperation and goodwill beca…

> No, you can't do it because the seller of the game does not allow you to do it. There is no law requiring sellers to lock down their games with DRM or other forms of restriction.

DRM is usually bypassed within hours or days of the game release. After that it is still illegal to copy the game from your friend.

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

#138

Post by wyattpeak »

pdonis wrote: post #73
wyattpeak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For games? No, for money. These actions are always dismissed on the basis that they're not selling something important. But setting aside the question of whether that's valid, they are selling in exchange for something important.

> These actions are always dismissed on the basis that they're not selling something important. No, it's on the basis that the buyer knew the terms perfectly well before the sale, and bought the thing anyway . The fact that it's a game that was bought just makes it even more unreasonable for the buyer to want to retroactively change the terms of the sale.

I can see why that argument might work for a laissez-faire libertarian, but we have innumerable laws on what is contractable. That this should be singled out specifically as something which shouldn't have any such protections seems in my experience to be attributable to the fact that people don't consider games important.

Besides which, I challenge your claim that the buyer knew the terms perfectly well. The terms are often dozens of pages long and written in dense legalese, with clearly little belief or intention that the buyer will read them, and arguably specifically to dissuade the buyer from reading them.

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

#139

Post by systemvoltage »

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…

Sounds nice, but I don't think we need legislation. It would bring the entire digital content ecomony to a grinding halt. The line between what can be owned and what cannot be is not clear. The line between what's a digital good and what's not is also not clear. Is your online bank balance a digital good? Is it an immutable binary that's considered a digital good? An in-game item in a MMORPG that requires servers to operate? Is Adobe Creative Cloud a good or a service?

The details are messy. And the lawmakers would guarantee the passing the most fucked up version of it with some other draconian measures bundled in there. Startup ecosystem would be in sheer panic to comply and some won't even contemplate starting a company selling digital goods/services. The scope is so insane, I am having a hard time thinking about it.

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

#140

Post by throwawaylinux »

techsupporter wrote: post #100
jonathankoren wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because you never actually bought the item. You got a license to run it on someone else’s server. Let’s say you bought a bunch of things for The Matrix Online, do you expect that server to run forever? It won’t. It didn’t. Why should someone else maintain it forever? Are you getting a refund? Why? You already extracted the useful life of it. If there’s government regulation it’s around the deceptive use of the…

> That’s because you never actually bought the item. You got a license to run it on someone else’s server. Don't mean to sound too cranky but this "you just bought a license" crap has been a thing since software began being software. It was no more fair back then than it is now. No one is arguing, at least I don't think they are, that a company has an obligation to keep servers running in perpetuity. But to tell me I…

There is nothing unfair about licensing. I contribute to FOSS software, I expect that an individual or company abide by the terms of the license I grant them and that license is terminated if they fail to meet various conditions. That seems fair to me, it wouldn't become unfair if a payment was required either.

But I think you have got it right with the rest of your comments. There has to be a meeting of the minds in these dealings, and I don't believe these companies are acting in good faith when they explicitly or implicitly suggest that you are "buying a game" or "buying a song" even if you can find out what that really means in fine print somewhere.

Hopefully we get more legislation and precedent that forces them to be more explicit about what these purchases mean exactly.

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