In a move sure to draw ire from players, Ubisoft reveals that users who don’t sign into their Ubisoft account could lose access to their games.

In a response to a post from the AntiDRM Twitter account, Ubisoft Support has clarified that users who don’t sign in to their account can potentially lose access to Ubisoft games they’ve purchased. The initial post from AntiDRM featured a snippet of an e-mail sent to a user from Ubisoft notifying them that their account had been temporarily suspended due to inactivity and warning that it would be closed permanently in 30 days. Responding to the ominous e-mail, the Ubisoft Support Twitter account stated “We certainly do not want you to lose access to your games or account” and noted that account closure could be avoided by signing in to the account again.

  • ono
    18·
    1 year ago

    with the clause that the storefront can ban/delete/deactivate your account for any reason.

    I think you’re speculating in order to make excuses for a corporation. Show us the clause that applies in this case, and I will retract my statement.

    Edit:

    It’s disappointing that several people replied to me with walls of text to lecture about things that were not disputed, and in some cases not even relevant. We know online game stores typically license them rather than selling them, folks, and Valve’s license terms are not Ubisoft’s terms. Kindly read before replying next time.

    One person actually brought an Ubisoft inactivity clause to the table. (Thanks, @[email protected]) Interestingly, that clause seems to be present only in the terms of service for certain regions. A quick search doesn’t find it in either the Canada or United States versions, for example. I wonder if that’s due to better consumer protection laws in some jurisdictions than others.

    So depending on which regional ToS the gamer(s) in question agreed to, Ubisoft accepting money and then revoking access might or might not have been fraudulent behavior.

    More importantly, it’s ethically wrong, and no amount of legal maneuvering will change that. Screw Ubisoft.

    • LittlePrimate@feddit.de
      10·
      1 year ago

      They indeed just “license” the games to us:

      The Services and Content are licensed to you, not sold. This means we grant you a personal, limited, non-transferable and revocable right and license to use the Services and access the Content, for your entertainment, non-commercial use, subject to your compliance with these Terms.

      For termination, it’s not any reason but a lot of reasons, including the here discussed:

      for any other reason in relation to your actions in or outside of the Services; upon notification, where your Account has been inactive for more than six months.

      The first one opens a lot of options for them to find a reason. None of those would trigger any reimbursement, though.

      Consequences of the Termination/Suspension of an Account.

      You cannot use the Services and Content anymore.
      In the event of termination of your Account or of Service(s) associated with your Account, no credit (such as for unused Services, unused subscription period, unused points or Ubisoft Virtual Currency) will be credited to you or converted into cash or any other form of reimbursement.

      Source

    • MJBrune@beehaw.org
      3·
      1 year ago

      It’s not fully speculation. You can go to every store and look at their TOS. In https://legal.ubi.com/StoreTermsofSale/en-INTL we see 1. Scope

      When you purchase on the Ubisoft Stores, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensed, non-commercial and personal license to use the Ubisoft Products.

      Also note:

      Ubisoft Products may also be purchased from third parties authorized by us to sell such Ubisoft Products. When you purchase Ubisoft Products from a third party, your purchase is with that third party and not Ubisoft.

      So I’ll do this for ubisoft but last I checked it was in Steam, EA, Gog, and Epic’s. Itch is the only one I hold out hope to be better but this is pretty boiler plate stuff.

      This license is just that, a license.

      These Terms of Sale are incorporated by reference to the Terms of Use of Ubisoft available at http://legal.ubi.com/termsofuse (“Terms of Use”). All capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meaning given to them in the Terms of Use. Certain Ubisoft Products are subject to the acceptance of an End User License Agreement (“EULA”) and any other additional terms, which will be available to you before you can access, download, install or use such Ubisoft Product. UBISOFT’s Privacy Policy is an integral part of these Terms of Sale and can be found at https://legal.ubi.com/privacypolicy (“Privacy Policy”). Please read it carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

      So we now need to look at the EULA and Privacy Policy.

      So the EULA of the store https://legal.ubi.com/eula/en-US Clause 1 backs of Clause 1 Scope of the Terms of Sale.

      Clause 8

      The EULA is effective from the earlier of the date You purchase, download or use the Product, until terminated according to its terms. You and UBISOFT (or its licensors) may terminate this EULA, at any time, for any reason. Termination by UBISOFT will be effective upon (a) notice to You or (b) termination of Your UBISOFT Account (if any) or © at the time of UBISOFT’s decision to discontinue offering and/or supporting the Product. This EULA will terminate automatically if You fail to comply with any of the terms and conditions of this EULA. Upon termination for any reason, You must immediately uninstall the Product and destroy all copies of the Product in Your possession.

      So Ubisoft reserves the right to terminate your account and thus the EULA agreement and thus your license.

      For fun, lets do a bigger storefront because ubisoft is small.

      Valve is smarter and calls this directly not a term of sale but a subscriber agreement. You are a subscriber to their service of steam and this is the agreement:

      https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#2

      Steam and your Subscription(s) require the download and installation of Content and Services onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a non-exclusive license and right, to use the Content and Services for your personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms). This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license. The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet.

      Establishes that these are licenses, not purchases and that you have to have a steam account and running the steam client.

      Valve may restrict or cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time in the event that (a) Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally, or (b) you breach any terms of this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use). In the event that your Account or a particular Subscription is restricted or terminated or cancelled by Valve for a violation of this Agreement or improper or illegal activity, no refund, including of any Subscription fees or of any unused funds in your Steam Wallet, will be granted.

      Valve reserves the right to cancel your subscription if they decide to cease providing such subscriptions to “similarly situated subscribers.” E.g. as long as they do it to everyone in your “situation” it’s legal. So Valve could very well delete inactive accounts legally without refunds. It’s in the EULA, you’ve agreed that as long as they do it without direct discrimination that it’s fine.

      So again, you can go through every storefront and realize you have no ownership or right to a refund if they decide to shut down. Also don’t see this as “pro-corporation” I am not defending anyone here. I am pointing out that people have not understood the loss of ownership in the digital world we now live. I’ve been sitting here waiting for the day that people go “hey wait, they can just delete my account without anything I can do?”

      • Lojcs@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 year ago

        10 doesn’t have a c. 9 is about account termination and has a c but there’s no mention of account deletion due to inactivity. “[if] Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally” can be interpreted as encompassing subscribers that have been inactive, but it sounds more about when a game’s servers shut down or valve stops distributing it in a region and all players lose access.

    • LittlePrimate@feddit.de
      1·
      1 year ago

      A quick search doesn’t find it in either the Canada or United States versions, for example. I wonder if that’s due to better consumer protection laws in some jurisdictions than others.

      Now that I think about it, it might not even be consumer protection but instead a GDPR issue. I’m in Europe. Users becoming inactive can actually force companies to delete their data. Ubisoft might not have any other choice than to completely delete inactive users and of course they’ll do what is best for them, not for the inactive users.