Ubisoft Revokes Digital Keys For Games Purchased Via Unauthorised Retailers

RogueyWon writes: For the last several days, some users of Ubisoft's uPlay system have been complaining that copies of games they purchased have been removed from their libraries. According to a statement issued to a number of gaming websites, Ubisoft believes that the digital keys revoked have been "fraudulently obtained." What this means in practice is unclear; while some of the keys may have been obtained using stolen credit card details, others appear to have been purchased from unofficial third-party resellers, who often undercut official stores by purchasing cheaper boxed retail copies of games and selling their key-codes online, or by exploiting regional price differences, buying codes in regions where games are cheaper to sell them elsewhere in the world. The latest round of revocations appears to have triggered an overdue debate into the fragility of customer rights in respect of digital games stores.

Comments

grandmother reference

[turkeydance]

“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” ok, i don't understand this.

Re:grandmother reference

[AK Marc]

ok, i don't understand this.

Ubisoft sold keys ad different prices. Some of the "cheap" keys were activated in "expensive" areas. Rather than identifying the resellers and shutting them down (though they may have done nothing wrong), Ubisoft identified the keys, and revoked them.

Note, Ubisoft made a profit selling these keys to authorized distributors, and the users paid for a (at the time) valid key. But Ubisoft thinks they could have extracted greater profit with a different sales plan, so they revoked them all to try again. Too many "save, restart" games played by Ubisoft.

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubisoft has created a horrible model that is difficult to get to work. It's great for them because it can make them more money. Now it doesn't work and consumers are losing out or are not even able to use something they paid for. I say force Ubisoft to enable all keys, whether it's paid for or not. Then it's up to them to figure out some other way to make money. Or just force them to publish a universally playable game for anyone to download. Possibly on a torrent site. Or just plain shut Ubisoft down.

Re:grandmother reference

[pla]

Simple, really:

Ubisoft just taught another generation of paying customers that piracy provides a superior product, regardless of price.

Congrats, Ubi! We haven't had a good DRM fuckup like this in a while - Without all your hard work, people might eventually forget how much it (and you) sucks. Keep up the good work!

Re:grandmother reference

[newcastlejon]

It seems the singularity has been and gone, yet nobody noticed.

Re:grandmother reference

[Pinhedd]

It's a marketing tactic called price discrimination.

The same product (usually a product with a very low marginal cost) is offered at different prices in different markets with the price tuned appropriately for each market.

A product may be offered at $60 in the North American market because that's what the market accepts as a fair value. On the other hand, $60 may be too high for a market such as eastern Europe, China, or South Asia where the per-capita income is much lower. Since the marginal cost of the product is very low, the product is sold at a lower price in regions with lower income. However, this opens up opportunities for grey-market activities where third parties purchase the product in the lower priced markets and resell them in the higher priced markets at a price below that of the original manufacturer. The third party then pockets the difference.

Grey market activities ultimately harm lower-income markets because these markets contribute substantially less to the manufacturer's bottom line. If revenue from the manufacturer's primary markets is threatened, they'll simply end price discrimination or cut off the weaker markets all together.

Re:grandmother reference

[kuzb]

Except in this era of increasing server-side reliance, game piracy is becoming less of an issue. It will eventually get to the point where you're not actually buying the game, you're buying an account with which you can then play the game. Since the majority of people don't think twice about needing to be always connected this trend will only continue.

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a great way for people that steal credit cards to actually make money off them, without using the cards for physical purchases.

You buy games from an official retailer online using a stolen credit card. Then you sell the cdkey to a site like g2a, undercutting all the legitimate sellers. Your cdkey instantly sells to some unknowning buyer. They use the key and put it into their account and play the game.

A few days later, the card owner notices and does a chargeback. Now the official retailer is forced to refund that money to the credit card company, effectively giving someone the game for free. So then they remove that game from the person's account. It punishes the buyer, who thought it was a legitimate transaction.

Re:grandmother reference

[aliquis]

G2A and Kinguin are places where either or both of the following happens:

* Some other sellers list and sell their keys which they have got in whatever way.
* Physical games are bought in Poland or Russia and a photo is taken of the key and then the games are sold and that photo delivered. Since prices are lower in those regions .. .. There's also the case where games are cheaper in say Russia or Malaysia/Indonesia or whatever on Steam and may not be restricted by region when you add them.

Re:grandmother reference

[mysidia]

Ubisoft made the equivalent of a Record Player Juke Box that requires your music player to have a modern equivalent of a telephone line hooked up to it.

When you want to buy some music, you find a retailer, and you buy the product from the store, who issues you a slip of paper with a single use coupon with a code printed on it, or you call up a retailer and order on the phone, then they give you the coupon code to write down after your credit card is charged.

The code allows you to go home, turn on your Juke box. You enter the code, and the Juke box uses your telephone line (modern digital equivalent) to fetch your song.

Because the music recording company is concerned about someone stealing your coupon, or your credit card coming back declined later, Your Juke box is required to make a phone call, every time you want to play a song, just to make sure that the coupon was good and not fraudulently copied or stolen.

One day the Juke box music recording company thought it would be a good idea to pick some preferred "favorite" stores in certain areas that were having a harder time selling the merchandise, so they would offer these stores a discount on the music coupons, and the stores could have a great big sale on their products, as long as they sell enough units directly to ordinary people.

Some other enterprising young chaps caught wind of the sale and ordered a very large amount of music, then brought it to their own stores to sell at a discount.

The music recording companies are very upset, because the discount is hurting their preferred stores in areas where their product can sell at higher prices, so to penalize the young chaps, they have talked with their preferred discount retailers to get a list of the codes purchased and report all their coupons as stolen, so the Juke boxes will not be able to accept them, and all that store's customers will have to bring back the product for a refund.

Re:grandmother reference

[Sir_Substance]

I've been on an anti-account binge for a while. If your game requires me to make a new account, I'll never play it.

It hasn't really affected the quality of my gaming experience. Turns out companies that spend heaps of time making elaborate anti-piracy mechanisms make shit games, who knew?

As a side note, I haven't bought a Ubisoft game for about 4 years, ever since this incident:

Speaking to IncGamers, creative director Stanislas Mettra stated that there are currently no plans to bring the game to PC because of fears that only Pirates will steal the game, and the last thing he wants to hear is any of your incessant ‘bitching’ over the issue.

Again, it hasn't really affected the quality of my gaming experience. Occasionally, I wonder if I'm missing out on assassins creed, but then I go try to play Dishonored, and remember I hate the whole genre.

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even better.

Since Ubisoft breached contract (they're acting as if there was no contract whatsoever with the customers whose keys were revoked), they're not bound by the license terms, and are free to do whatever is prohibited on those terms.

IANAL, you should probably contact a lawyer before cracking the game. But you should contact a lawyer and see how you can fuck Ubisoft if your key has been revoked. It's ripe for a class action suit I'd think.

Re:grandmother reference

[ultranova]

It will eventually get to the point where you're not actually buying the game,

Eventually? You haven't ever bought a game, merely a license to use it. Ubisoft seems hell-bent on demonstrating why, exactly speaking, this is a bad thing. I honestly can't tell if the whole company is doing some kind of performance art or executing a serious business strategy at this point.

But it's okay. We're due for another video game crash. Let bullshit burn.

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in this era of increasing server-side reliance, game piracy is becoming less of an issue. It will eventually get to the point where you're not actually buying the game, you're buying an account with which you can then play the game. Since the majority of people don't think twice about needing to be always connected this trend will only continue.

Bingo, mod this guy up. This is exactly what the games industry has been moving towards for years and the trend is accelerating. It's really the only viable answer to piracy that's left and publishers are embracing it wholeheartedly.

Eventually, there will be no standalone games and every game will be lost to history when its servers shut down. Thanks, pirate assholes.

(If I had a dollar for every /.er who at least thought of writing an angry justification about pirating in response to my last sentence, I'd be able to retire tomorrow. LOL)

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

All true, but paying actual money for a licence key at an unusually low price from an unlikely source is like paying five bucks for a 60" 4K TV off the back of a lorry. If you're the recipient of stolen goods, however unwitting, the law in most places will leave you empty-handed if the goods are identified and returned to their original owner, unless you can find and take legal action against whoever sold you the goods.

I'm not saying the situation doesn't suck for the innocent party, and I'm certainly not supporting Ubisoft's generally aggressive use of DRM, but in this case it does seem that the situation is exactly analogous on-line to how the law has worked in the real world for a long time.

Re:grandmother reference

[Hamsterdan]

And that is why It's a bad idea to use software that relies on server side authentication. Case in point, I just reinstalled my security cam software, but it won't accept my *paid-for* license because it doesn't exist anymore. So my legally bought software is now useless.

Re:grandmother reference

[NotQuiteReal]

My grandmothers* are both dead, you insensitive clod!

* I had two. If you you only had one grandmother, my condolences, all the more so.

Re:grandmother reference

[Pi1grim]

Guess how many of those "happy customers" are to touch anything Ubisoft anytime soon? The answer is - as soon as it pops up on a torrent site with all the BS cut out. I'm not here to defend said customers or Ubisoft, but Ubisoft's arrogance is going to hurt their sales, that's a fact.

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is why It's a bad idea to use software that relies on server side authentication. Case in point, I just reinstalled my security cam software, but it won't accept my *paid-for* license because it doesn't exist anymore. So my legally bought software is now useless.

Exceptions do exist, IF the developers are not complete cunts.

For example, the final patches of Doom 3, Quake 4 and Prey all removed the CD checking requirements of their respective games (back when CD verification for games was a thing). It was replaced with a master server authentication scheme which would check to see if your CD key was flagged as being pirated and if so, block the game from running until you entered in a legit key.

However, if the master server [i]cannot[i/] be contacted for any reason, the games err on the site of caution and assume that the user is legit. Fancy that! The online authentication system of these games actually trusts the user unless proven otherwise. If proof cannot be obtained one way or the other, it doesn't penalize the player in the slightest. This is rather important since the Prey master server was removed several years ago - if it assumed the user was a filthy pirate, it would have been impossible for ANY legit copies to run.

This is what I want to see more of with regards to online authentication. If you can't authenticate one way or another, assume they're legit. It's not as if pirates won't use cracked versions regardless.

Re:grandmother reference

[AuMatar]

Depends on your definition of harm. The money the people had to spend doesn't disappear- it gets spent in other ways. Many of those other ways will be local businesses, which will improve the local economy. The long term effect may be positive. Especially with software that can just be pirated.

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Coward]

If the general population is meant to accept companies outsourcing jobs to places with cheaper labor then companies can't object to me wanting to take advantage of said globalization to outsource my purchasing to another country to get a cheaper price.

Fuck them.

Re:grandmother reference

[sjames]

Or to put it another way, they take advantage of unhealthy markets in North America that fail to push prices down to the marginal cost of production and do their best to defeat any natural market force that might bypass that market.

Re:grandmother reference

[sjames]

It's actually more analogous to living near the border and driving to the other country to buy your TV for less. Then when you get home, the manufacturer breaks in to your home and steals it.

Re:grandmother reference

[RogueyWon]

The funny thing is that there are other cases in which buying a key for cheaper than you can get it on the official Ubisoft store is absolutely fine.

For example, just before Christmas, Far Cry 4 was £45 in the UK via the uPlay store. Alternatively, you could walk into Game (the UK's largest high street games retailer) and pick up a boxed copy of the game for £30. If you do that, you still need to register the code in the box with uPlay and run the game via uPlay, though you do get the option of doing the initial install from a physical disc (useful if you have a slow net connection). But that appears to have been absolutely fine.

Second case, the launch of Assassin's Creed: Unity was delayed on Steam in many parts of the world (so for a while, the only way to buy a digital-only copy was uPlay). But it did launch just before Christmas. During the Steam Christmas Sale, there were days when the game was £45 on uPlay and half that amount on Steam. Again, this is absolutely fine with Ubisoft.

So if what people on forums are saying is true (and we do always have to be a bit cautious here), then it would appear that the old adage that "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is" doesn't necessarily hold true. After all, if the same kinds of discounts are available from multiple retailers, some of which are mystically "Ubisoft approved" and others aren't (though no list of the former is published), then the end-consumer might justifiably confused as to which is which.

Re:grandmother reference

[sg_oneill]

Ubisoft sold keys ad different prices. Some of the "cheap" keys were activated in "expensive" areas. Rather than identifying the resellers and shutting them down (though they may have done nothing wrong), Ubisoft identified the keys, and revoked them.

Note, Ubisoft made a profit selling these keys to authorized distributors, and the users paid for a (at the time) valid key. But Ubisoft thinks they could have extracted greater profit with a different sales plan, so they revoked them all to try again. Too many "save, restart" games played by Ubisoft.

I hope they didn't try this stunt on Australian customers. We have "parallel importation" legislation forbidding retailers from trying to prevent people monopolizing sales channels againt people who import cheaper from overseas. Back in the day, the ACCC actually forced retailers to stop supplying DVD players that where not multiregion, although the bloody conservatives put a stop to THOSE shenanigans. Hell back then the ACCC even sued Sony for going after mod-chippers.

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Coward]

In what way is that a car analogy?

Re:grandmother reference

[Trax3001BBS]

Except in this era of increasing server-side reliance, game piracy is becoming less of an issue. It will eventually get to the point where you're not actually buying the game, you're buying an account with which you can then play the game. Since the majority of people don't think twice about needing to be always connected this trend will only continue.

EA.COM now Origin.com started this with the Battle Field series. Steam, most don't mind always running as it's been operating for so long, I remember the /. article about Stream coming; being an on-line service, I tried to find it a few months ago with no luck, but it wasn't being accepted even back then.

Now a gamer can have numerous front doors running switching back and forth between games, A lot of needless overhead.

Origin doesn't have any requirement to be running. I just exit it when a game starts, 2.5 years later it complains about not being sync'd which again can be ignored, once a week I'll sync my games. Most are now following Steam's example (I only know of Steam and Origin, little about UBI.). Well just that UBI just shot themselves in the foot, yet again.

-------

I not only requested but had to call for the BF3 box (3 CD's are included), Yet all the first CD does is start downloading the game from Origin and many other mirrors.

Re:grandmother reference

[gnasher719]

In the UK, you should have kept your invoice when you bought the game on holiday, and then you can go to a small claims court and ask them for damages. Obviously you can't complain to the retailer who may be thousands of miles away.

However, on my last holiday I saw fake products in such huge amounts, you might have a hard time convincing anyone that your product was an original and not a fake.

Re:grandmother reference

[DrXym]

What Ubisoft are doing is no different from what EA did recently or what Steam did before them.

Personally I think they should let people use these keys but the keys should unlockversions of the game that are heavily localized, thus negating any "advantage" people think they got from buying them. e.g. I bet Far Cry 4 and AC 4 are a lot less fun if the audio, text and subtitles are hardcoded to Thai and multiplayer to Thai servers.

As it is, I wouldn't be surprised if the terms of service allow them to do precisely what they did but I think there are better ways to discourage code selling.

Re:grandmother reference

[DrXym]

This is no different from what happens on Steam all the time. I remember buying Left 4 Dead in a store for less than it cost to buy it on steam. The retail copy contained a steam code so it was effectively the same game.

It just demonstrates the utterly obscene pricing models in these online stores. In the real world the MSRP / RRP is just a guideline - the store can sell a game for any margin they like and usually they reduce it below MSRP. In the online store, the price is always the MSRP. I occasionally read the (pathetic) excuse that it's the publishers who set the price and there is nothing the store can do about it. Wrong! Publishers should be required to sell their digital download licences at the same wholesale cost as the physical copy and then digital stores retail can compete on their margins.

Just recently Sony offered a 10% discount off of PSN by way of apology for being attacked on Christmas day. The irony is that even with 10% off the prices there were still more expensive than a physical copy with the cost of middleman and postage thrown in. It's not just them of course - XBL is the same. And Steam. And Origin. And UPlay. They only time these services offer value is for games so old that their retail sales have flatlined and where people might pay $10 for a game in digital form that they wouldn't even bother with in physical.

Re:grandmother reference

[DrXym]

They breached contract? They were given a code to redeem as a licence. If the code was associated with terms and conditions that said what kind of account, or region the licence could be used in then they're not breaching anything.

Re:grandmother reference

[Alumoi]

Almost dead on, but you will not BUY an account, you will just RENT it.

Re:grandmother reference

[jabuzz]

Or you could just ring up your credit card company and dispute the charge for a full refund.

Re:grandmother reference

[robosmurf]

That's not really true of Steam. The reason I (like many people) have huge Steam collections, is that they frequently DO offer games (including recent AAA ones) at a significant discount.

Re:grandmother reference

[Lonewolf666]

Depending on where the buyer got the "unauthorized" key, exploiting differences in market prices may actually be legal. Compare http://www.olswang.com/articles/2012/09/2013/04/exhaustion-of-rights-in-the-download-to-own-market/. And I doubt that many people buy their keys outside the EU.

Of course, that does not apply to outright stolen keys. But I consider it absolutely plausible that Ubisoft is making bogus claims about the "unauthorized" part and relies on people not suing over 50 pounds.

My personal solution is not buying games from publishers who require digital keys or other forms of DRM. Which means I have mostly older titles where the publisher has given up on DRM (bargain bin games often come "unlocked" so there is no more cost in maintaining the DRM). Tough luck for Ubisoft, EA and Valve ;-)

Re:grandmother reference

[TheRaven64]

It's really the only viable answer to piracy that's left and publishers are embracing it wholeheartedly.

I used to pirate games and I used to buy games. I eventually couldn't be bothered with pirating and worrying about malware or with trying to jump through the hoops that the publishers wanted, so I stopped playing games altogether. Then gog.com launched and sold me games that I was nostalgic about, cheaply. Then they started selling newer games. I spent more with them last six months than I did on total on games in the five years since Steam was launched and the industry wend DRM-happy. I can download DRM-free installers for all of the games, often in OS X, Windows, and Linux versions.

It turns out that there's another answer to piracy that works: sell your product in a way that's easy to use at a reasonable price. Stop worrying about pirates and start worrying about customers. Someone who wouldn't buy your game anyway who pirates it is not a lost sale, but someone who can't be bothered to put up with your treating them like a criminal and so doesn't buy from you is. Buying a game from gog.com is easier than pirating and, if you factor in the cost of your time, probably cheaper as well.

Give me a product I want for a reasonable price and I will happily hand over my money, because I feel that I'm getting something valuable in return. Don't, and... well, computer games are not the only form of entertainment available.

Re:grandmother reference

[Slashjones]

PS4 will be my last console.

Wow, you're already doing such a good job of not buying products from companies we know are evil! Sony Rootkits, DRM, removal of OtherOS, proprietary locked-down consoles... Sony's evil knows no bounds. And yet you still have a PS4.

Re:grandmother reference

[Slashjones]

Thanks, pirate assholes.

So, hold on a minute. A company *chooses* to harm everyone by using DRM, and you blame someone other than the person who chose to use the DRM? That makes absolutely no sense. How about some personal responsibility for the people who choose to make their software non-free, who choose to use DRM, who choose to implement malicious features, and who choose to use those malicious features to subjugate their users?

Instead, you use a propaganda term and blame people who have nothing to do with any of these decisions.

(If I had a dollar for every /.er who at least thought of writing an angry justification about pirating in response to my last sentence, I'd be able to retire tomorrow. LOL)

Disagreements needn't be filled with anger. If you say something nonsensical, surely it isn't surprising that people would at least voice their disagreement?

Re:grandmother reference

[StillAnonymous]

"if you buy in place A at price X and sell in place B at price Y, those who are selling in B are competing with an unfair disadvantage probably related to differences in taxes."

I see. Once again it's bad if the common man does this, but if big companies and governments do it, A-OK!

Re:grandmother reference

[StillAnonymous]

The good news is that there are tens of thousands of games already out there that are not subject to this ball & chain. Those of us who refuse to put up with the nonsense of Ubi and other have plenty of choice already.

Re:grandmother reference

[RivenAleem]

If this was a physical product that I bought in one market for a low price, and transported it to another market to sell at a higher price we would refer to it as simple economics, capitalism even!

As soon as it happens "on a computer" it is suddenly different?

Re:grandmother reference

[Pinhedd]

No. Usage of UPlay and other online distribution services is dependant upon an agreement between the licencor and licencee. If that agreement clearly states that licence cannot be transferred to another party without the consent of the service provider or that the licence must be purchased from an authorized retailer then any third party that purchases the licence runs the risk of the service provider refusing to provide service.

Anyone who purchases a game is free to sell the physical copy of the game (first sale doctrine), but the publisher is in no way required to provide service to the party that purchased it.

Re:grandmother reference

[Pinhedd]

Wrong.

The marginal cost of production is not the same as the total cost of production. The marginal cost of production is the cost to produce one more unit of a product. In the case of easily replicable digital products the marginal cost is negligible, especially when distributed digitally. The total cost of production includes other factors such as the massive amount of capital sunk into developing and marketing the product. Fixed costs need to be recouped for a project to break even and eventually turn a profit. If the price were depressed to the marginal cost of production the company would never recoup any of the fixed cost and hence never break even much less turn a profit.

Re:grandmother reference

[sociocapitalist]

It's a marketing tactic called rape your customers for as much as you can.

FTFY.

Re:grandmother reference

[Pinhedd]

Grey market activities do not harm lower income markets. Vendor reactions to grey market activities might but the grey market itself does not affect them.

That's splitting hairs. The grey market activities harm the vendor which prompts the vendor to react in order to protect their primary revenue. Low income markets usually constitute a rather small portion of a large manufacturer's revenue, so they can live with out it. On the other hand, the low income markets will lose access to the vendor's goods and services.

And just start revoking the product from anyone who bought it that they think shouldn't have. No refunds of course. I'm surprised if that's actually legal.

They didn't purchase the product from Ubisoft, so why should Ubisoft give them a refund? They should seek a refund from the unauthorized retailer.

Re: grandmother reference

[mSparks43]

I suspect he bought it off the back of the success of the ps3.

I would have had a ps4. but I was lucky enough to be too busy to buy one when they came out. then after reading all the shit about them didn't.

ps3 is still probably the best hardware I've ever bought. only such hardware I've ever bought multiple times. think there's about 5 or 6 of them knocking around now in different rooms and houses.

on ubisoft.
aren't they part of the whole Activision / EA games shit brigade?
what did you expect? nothing new here.

Re:grandmother reference

[Cenan]

Except a pirated item does not equate to a lost sale. Further, those hypothetical people who would then download the pirated game have already paid, again not hurting sales. You'd be surprised how quickly people turn back to the monkey that kicked their teeth in for another treatment.

Event Y is going to hurt the profits of X - bullshit. Time and time again we're shown that prior reputation has absolutely nothing to do with future profits, contrary to common belief. My personal hypothesis is that marketing machines are just too good at hyping whatever game the company is putting out, making gamers want to fork over money to a disreputable company rather than wait for the pirated version to become available.

Re:grandmother reference

[AmiMoJo]

Ubisoft aren't as dumb as you think. They know that when they ban these keys most of the people who bought them will blame the vendor for selling them a dodgy copy. They know that when the next POS hype-fest is released those same people will flock to buy it, only they will be paying full price instead of using eBay or a discount website.

Re:grandmother reference

[CronoCloud]

Jesus fuck. So I can't buy games while on holiday in another country? A big FUCK YOU goes to ubisoft.

First World Problem.

Re:grandmother reference

[drinkypoo]

Jesus fuck. So I can't buy games while on holiday in another country? A big FUCK YOU goes to ubisoft.

First World Problem.

There's nothing more ironic than someone who has the luxury of having time to complain about someone complaining spending that time complaining about them.

Yes, I realize what this post entails. But I was just sitting here and noticed that instead of curing cancer or solving world hunger, you chose to spend your time trying to make someone feel bad about complaining by complaining about them, and thought maybe you could use a bit o' perspective.

Re:grandmother reference

[Diss Champ]

Normally a pirated item does not equate to a lost sale.

But when a company shits on their paying customers, those customers may either avoid the company's games entirely in the future, or decide that that company is an exception to their usual practice of paying money & pirate the game.

You are right that some people seem to enjoy abuse. Those people probably bought the game on the first day out at full retail and will continue to do so. Most of them probably paid enough that their keys didn't get canceled and from them the whole thing is moot.

Re:grandmother reference

[drinkypoo]

Ubisoft aren't as dumb as you think. They know that when they ban these keys most of the people who bought them will blame the vendor for selling them a dodgy copy.

I'm not sure they will do that. I think the majority of the gaming press will flame them for doing this (and rightly so, you don't punish people who are trying to be your customers, even if they are seeking bargains) and I think the majority of customers will feel however they are told to feel. And I think most of the rest of them will be pissed off because they won't have been able to play the game they paid for.

There's often legitimate discounts on games, so there's no valid reason to penalize customers for seeking discount prices. Likely some of those users made their purchases in ill faith, but I'd bet they were in the minority.

Re: grandmother reference

[Anonymous Coward]

You think ubisoft didn't put a "binding arbitration" clause somewhere?

Re: grandmother reference

[Slashjones]

I wouldn't buy anything from Sony, because they're an evil company and it's so easy to avoid their products.

Re:grandmother reference

[dunkelfalke]

And this is also bullshit. I live in Germany, but I prefer my games in English (or whatever the "native" language of the game was provided I speak that language) since there is always some translation loss.

Re:grandmother reference

[dunkelfalke]

So when businesses use the advantages of globalisation, then it is good and fine and harms noone. But when customers do the same, then it is totally evil.

Re:grandmother reference

[mrchaotica]

For that to work, the vast majority of the game has to exist on the client (i.e., it has to be single-player or capable of LAN play or something). Hackers are not going to be coding up an offline server for an MMO. Maybe they'd be stealing the server-side code and adapting that, but not coding it up from scratch.

Re: grandmother reference

[mSparks43]

Do you really buy into the whole "good company/evil company" idea? - or was that just a throw away comment?

Kinda nonsense isn't it?

They've been pulled up more than others for some of the shit they do, but I don't see why that makes them better or worse than any other company, maybe slightly more "cutthroat" than some, but they certainly sponsor their fair share of noble goals, and most of what they are doing wrong are simply bad business decisions - that has nothing to do with being "evil" - just a bit stupid and out of touch.

PS3 was a great product, the Walkman was a great product.

the iPhone - in its day - was a great product.

Even Marconi had their fair share of "great" products back in the day.

If a product line does crap things - that doesn't make the company that made it "evil" - it just means the product is crap.

So to summarize - I don't really believe any of these companies are "evil" (some of the people in them are proper pyschos tho), just some have better staff and decision makers than others.

And that changes with the decision makers.

Why is it important?

I hope Satya Nadella can rescue the electronics and games market, it's in a right state.

Re:grandmother reference

[chris200x9]

I'm pretty sure they do sell keys at wholesale to other retailers though, I pre-ordered dying light through greenmangaming for 25% off for example. You'll also see downloads, which are essentially just a steam key, cheaper on amazon too.

Re: grandmother reference

[Slashjones]

Kinda nonsense isn't it?

I won't give my money to companies that continually do evil things; it's pretty simple. I don't want to support Sony's behavior; they support DRM, proprietary software, make use of rootkits, and their software has actual malicious features so they can screw over users (like they did with OtherOS).

They've been pulled up more than others for some of the shit they do, but I don't see why that makes them better or worse than any other company

Because there are other companies that don't do such evil things. Not Microsoft or Nintendo, but they exist. I don't really see the need to buy Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo garbage in the first place; it's so easy to avoid it.

Re:grandmother reference

[vux984]

They didn't purchase the product from Ubisoft, so why should Ubisoft give them a refund?

Ubisoft revoked their product.

They should seek a refund from the unauthorized retailer.

No Ubisoft should refund me my money; and seek restitution from the unauthorized seller.

Suppose I buy a bike rack from amazon.com and use one of the services available to redirect the shipment to Canada. Because the same rack is nearly 50% more in Canada. ( Yakima Holdup MSRP $580 CAD); available for $520 CAD on Amazon.ca. $305 is the best price I can find on Amazon.com. That's $378 CAD.

So if I decide to save $120+ by bringing it in from the states; its grey market product. Canadian authorized resellers hate this, but am I really supposed to pay 50% more, when I can legally purchase it for less? Corporations shift their expenses and profits around like crazy... but it's unethical if I play the same game?

Should Yakima really be allowed to show up at my house and take it away? And tell me to try to collect a refund from the seller in the USA? Or perhaps I should QQ to the shipment redirect/import service?

Why is it ok for Ubi?

Low income markets usually constitute a rather small portion of a large manufacturer's revenue, so they can live with out it. On the other hand, the low income markets will lose access to the vendor's goods and services.

This is true. But the border between eastern europe and western europe is a line on a map. If your selling the same product on both sides of the line at radically different prices to maximize YOUR profits, how can you villainize the people on the two sides of the line from correcting what would anywhere else be an obvious market FAILURE.

I hear your point; and I don't object to Ubi ~trying~ to price discriminate; but if they can't then they have to deal with that, they can't just start revoking sales and taking things away from people who bought the product on the wrong side of their special line. *I* certainly didn't make any agreement with Ubisoft about where or from whom I would purchase X.

Their beef is with their eastern european and asian distribution channel not me.

Coming after me... just ensures they've lost a customer. Permanently. (And to be honest, I haven't bought an ubisoft game in years already, precisely because of their various dick moves. And I do buy lots of games.)

Re: grandmother reference

[Cederic]

You think that trumps the Sale of Goods Act, distance selling regulations or other UK consumer protections?

Re:grandmother reference

[Cederic]

No, never.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
http://www.instructables.com/i...

Oh.

Re:grandmother reference

[Cederic]

Ok, so it's conspiracy to commit fraud.

Happier now?

Re:grandmother reference

[Pinhedd]

No Ubisoft should refund me my money; and seek restitution from the unauthorized seller.

No. A refund is a return payment made from a merchant to a customer. Refunds are not made to third parties that were never part of the original business transaction. The customer should seek restitution from the middleman that made the fraudulent charge.

Suppose I buy a bike rack from amazon.com and use one of the services available to redirect the shipment to Canada. Because the same rack is nearly 50% more in Canada. ( Yakima Holdup MSRP $580 CAD); available for $520 CAD on Amazon.ca. $305 is the best price I can find on Amazon.com. That's $378 CAD.

So if I decide to save $120+ by bringing it in from the states; its grey market product. Canadian authorized resellers hate this, but am I really supposed to pay 50% more, when I can legally purchase it for less? Corporations shift their expenses and profits around like crazy... but it's unethical if I play the same game?

Should Yakima really be allowed to show up at my house and take it away? And tell me to try to collect a refund from the seller in the USA? Or perhaps I should QQ to the shipment redirect/import service?

You're comparing the import of a good to a revocation of a service due breach of contract and/or fraud. Amazing. In other news, apples are still not oranges.

Why is it ok for Ubi?

In this case it seems to be fraud related. I'm not aware of any company outright disabling or revoking service for legal grey-market activities but if they really wanted to annoy grey market purchasers they could simply point to a clause in their terms of service allowing them to do so.

That bike rack that you mentioned above is purchased outright, whereas Ubisoft's games are licensed. A better analogy would be leasing a vehicle. Many leasing companies will not allow the lessee to take the vehicle out of the country without permission.

This is true. But the border between eastern europe and western europe is a line on a map. If your selling the same product on both sides of the line at radically different prices to maximize YOUR profits, how can you villainize the people on the two sides of the line from correcting what would anywhere else be an obvious market FAILURE.

Europe is very economically diverse. Germany has nearly 4x the per-capita GDP as Poland, which happens to be right next door. What's affordable to someone in Germany is not necessarily affordable to someone in Poland.
If a company wants to offer the same service in both countries at regionally appropriate price points they can attach conditions to the use of that service. Region locked game consoles are a good example of this. Outright revoking access to the service is crude, which is why many publishers are switching to language-locked editions. A high-priced English-French-German-Spanish-Italian edition on one side, and a cheap Polish edition on the other. This can negatively affected ex-pats that don't speak the native language, but that's a very small group.

I hear your point; and I don't object to Ubi ~trying~ to price discriminate; but if they can't then they have to deal with that, they can't just start revoking sales and taking things away from people who bought the product on the wrong side of their special line. *I* certainly didn't make any agreement with Ubisoft about where or from whom I would purchase X.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you didn't agree to anything, and neither did Ubisoft which makes neither party beholden to the other and Ubisoft doesn't owe you shit in terms of either service or a refund; or you agreed to the ToS and accept the consequences of breaking them.

Re:grandmother reference

[sjames]

Entirely irrelevant. A healthy market will nevertheless push the sale cost towards the marginal cost of production. It will never reach it, but it will definitely approach it.

Re: grandmother reference

[mSparks43]

->t's pretty simple. I don't want to support Sony's behavior;

I'm pretty sure the same thing applies to large numbers of people who work in every other company.

Why does people talking about the people in Sony make you think they are any different?

->Because there are other companies that don't do such evil things.
Not really imho.
There are other companies who you haven't been told did such evil things, but I very much doubt you will find any hardware/software company on the planet with a clean and friendly past of all it's past and present staff and products.

It seems to me you buy into the idea that a "brand" means something.
It doesn't, it's purely fiction surely?
For the good and the bad.

And anyway, things aren't all that clear cut.
Take DRM for example.
Evil DRM....
So does that mean we should avoid using it ourselves to protect ourselves from government surveillance?

Same applies to the PS3
The fact they did DRM properly, means no hacked games and no cheaters. I like that.
Does that mean I like the Cinavia thing?
No, but that just means I don't use the ps3 to stream movies.

Re:grandmother reference

[orgelspieler]

WTF? GP didn't say that was a good thing. In fact, I'm pretty sure GP said "this is a bad thing." Literally. Right there. Next time try reading the entire comment before freaking out.

Re: grandmother reference

[Slashjones]

It seems to me you buy into the idea that a "brand" means something.
It doesn't, it's purely fiction surely?
For the good and the bad.

That's because it does. I stay away from companies that do evil things, as I don't want to fund their evil activities. Sony still makes proprietary software and DRM, so I don't want to give them funding. This is very easy to understand.

So does that mean we should avoid using it ourselves to protect ourselves from government surveillance?

Yes, and also to protect yourself from the company's malicious 'features.'

The fact they did DRM properly, means no hacked games and no cheaters.

The ends don't justify the means. Maybe they should have real security rather than relying on locked-down, DRM-infested consoles and obscurity. This would never happen with free software. Good security doesn't rely on obscurity like this.

If you're willing to sacrifice your rights so you can avoid the bogeymen known as cheaters, you lack principles.

Re:grandmother reference

[AK Marc]

The details of this indicate that the "key" is legal, but followed a supply chain that didn't maximize Ubisoft's profits, so Ubisoft canceled it. It's very hard to parallel import something "illegally". Drugs are the main exception to that rule. Viagra made in the US, shipped to Canada for sale, bought in Canada, and re-imported to the US, is illegal because the quality of the drug, made in the USA and factory sealed could be inferior to the US standard. But other than that one bit of protectionism, there's precious little that can't be re-imported. The Supreme Court even upheld that right.

Re: grandmother reference

[Slashjones]

Avoiding Sony's products is easy. In general, you should avoid giving money to evil companies if you can.

Re: grandmother reference

[mSparks43]

->The ends don't justify the means.

So taking security seriously is not something we should do?

->If you're willing to sacrifice your rights so you can avoid the bogeymen known as cheaters, you lack principles.

Don't understand this at all. What rights am I sacrificing?

->DRM-infested consoles and obscurity. This would never happen with free software. Good security doesn't rely on obscurity like this.
That sounds like you haven't actually given it much thought.
Obscurity is as worthwhile tool as any other.
It's not a great tool that will give you strong security.
But it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative of telling everyone everything about your security system.

E.g. automated lights turning on and off are an excellent example of good "security by obscurity" ...Just because you shouldn't rely on something, doesn't mean it's an evil idea or not worthwhile.

There's a place for both, can't say I'm a fan of sony or think they have a great future ahead of them - too many bad business decisions.
But I really don't see the rationale in avoiding any good product because you don't like the brand that makes it.
All you do by doing that is encourage all of them to make worse products, by not giving the market the signals they need to know what you are looking for.
 

Re:grandmother reference

[schnell]

Entirely irrelevant. A healthy market will nevertheless push the sale cost towards the marginal cost of production. It will never reach it, but it will definitely approach it.

How does your math work?

• Cost to produce the first copy of an A-list videogame: $60 million
• Cost to distribute the second copy digitally: $.03

How do you see those two converging?

Re: grandmother reference

[Slashjones]

So taking security seriously is not something we should do?

If you take security seriously, you're not going to use DRM-infested proprietary software at all, fool. In fact, you'd stay far away from *Sony* products, as you should be aware.

Don't understand this at all. What rights am I sacrificing?

Do you know what DRM is? It inherently restricts you.

And obviously proprietary software does not respect the four freedoms.

But it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative of telling everyone everything about your security system.

Free software is often more secure, so no.

But I really don't see the rationale in avoiding any good product because you don't like the brand that makes it.

It's called voting with your wallet and not supporting evil activities. Sony's products aren't "good" 99% of the time anyway because they're filled with DRM and proprietary software.

All you do by doing that is encourage all of them to make worse products, by not giving the market the signals they need to know what you are looking for.

That makes no sense. You don't buy from them because they're doing Evil Thing X. If lots of people do this and make it known why they are not buying, they will hopefully stop.

Re:grandmother reference

[sjames]

Over time, naturally. You do know how converging works, yes?

Consider Far Cry 3. Shipped 10 million copies, so that's $6 each for the development costs + $0.03 for the digital copy. That suggests the price to converge on is $6.03. Do you believe that has happened?

Re:grandmother reference

[CronoCloud]

There's nothing more ironic than someone who has the luxury of having time to complain about someone complaining spending that time complaining about them.....
thought maybe you could use a bit o' perspective.

That is true, but if I was on "vacation" in another country, buying videogames would be a rather low priority compared to enjoying the things that are unique to that country.

Perhaps it is in part due to the fact that I'm a console gamer, who remembers the time of consoles with regions and would think: "Why buy something that isn't guaranteed to work back home".

Of course with modern console games no longer being region locked, I wouldn't have to worry. It's only PC gamers with "keys" and using proxies and VPN's to authorize said cheap Russian/Polish key they bought, that have issues.

Re: grandmother reference

[mSparks43]

->Do you know what DRM is? It inherently restricts you.
Unlike many
I believe the principle to explicitly assign rights to content is vital and important to everyone.

I should be able to say "Only bob can read this"
as much as Ubisoft should be able to say "we didn't get the money for you to play our game so you can't play our game"

That doesn't mean I don't wholly back people willing to say "you can do whatever the f' you want with this" - Its a complete fallacy that DRM negatively affects people that want to say this - quite the opposite imho. The web is a much nicer place because such things have become explicit.

legally speaking, you have no rights to _Other_ peoples things other than those they grant you.
Just because there is nothing really stopping you, doesn't mean putting things in place to enforce what the creators want is evil or restricts me.

Do you think a technical solution that forces people to release their sourcecode with the binary for GPL software would be a bad thing?

Re:grandmother reference

[im_thatoneguy]

Not maybe 1:1 but I know people who sold software and as soon as the crack would go wild their sales immediately plummeted. Custom DRM was the best way to extend the time from release to crack but also releasing stripped down trial versions helped a lot since it reduced the demand for a cracked version.

It shouldn't be a surprise that the Games industry has chosen DLC to be its mode of extracting revenue. Release a game for free and buy that horse armor.

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

In that case, perhaps it's more closely analogous to paying someone abroad to buy something cheap and ship it to you, but then complaining when your delivery arrives that you got charged the import taxes your oh-so-honest supplier didn't pay.

Sometimes things that look too good to be true really are, but usually there's a catch. Seeing a deal that good and not checking thoroughly for the catch is just asking for trouble.

Re:grandmother reference

[Cenan]

Really? I can understand a piece of software both being one of a kind and severely overpriced, such as Windows, being pirated. In that case I think it's correct to almost equate piracy with a lost sale. Granted you would have to assume that people would have bought it without the cracks being available. More likely potential buyers remain on an older version, or in extreme cases find an alternative.

I've also worked at places where a piece of software was integral to running the business, but gouging via license fees forced them into creative setups to work around it.

I've not actually heard of a software company going out of business due to piracy. Mismanagement or other bone headed crap, sure. Piracy tends to follow popularity, and in my experience money follows that.

Re:grandmother reference

[sjames]

That's an entirely in-apt analogy unless you believe Ubisoft is a government agency empowered to confiscate goods imported w/o paying an import duty.

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Maybe, but for better or worse, the situation today is that Ubisoft is effectively empowered to "confiscate" keys acquired through illegitimate channels in violation of whatever terms of sale or licensing agreements those keys came with.

Now, you might argue that the law should be updated to address the rights of customers buying digital products in a more even-handed way. If you did, I'd be the first to agree. But even then, it's hard to see why those rights would or should protect someone with the digital equivalent of stolen property. If you wanted to legitimise reselling keys across borders as a matter of policy then you'd probably also need an explicit change so that DRM schemes attempting to prevent cross-border trade were prohibited and anyone operating them on a commercial basis was required to honour otherwise valid keys for any sort of activation or customer support purposes.

Re:grandmother reference

[Pinhedd]

Good god, did you drop out of high school or get kicked out?

Re:grandmother reference

[sjames]

I take it you have no counter argument so you have resorted to a childish ad-hominem?

Re:grandmother reference

[sjames]

They are so empowered in the same sense that I am empowered to take my neighbor's stereo. That is, I could do it if I had no ethics and the police probably wouldn't even send someone to look in to it.

Re:grandmother reference

[mattack2]

This is no different from what happens on Steam all the time. I remember buying Left 4 Dead in a store for less than it cost to buy it on steam. The retail copy contained a steam code so it was effectively the same game.

Amazon successfully gets me to look at the $5 albums they have on sale every month. (That's a bit lower than the average I paid for the vast majority of my CDs, most bought through CD clubs long ago.) Strangely though, sometimes the CD version, _even including AutoRip_, is even less than that. So they get me to look at the "oh that's cheap" $5 version, then on their own site, I find an even cheaper version, Prime applicable, that ALSO includes the digital version!

Re:grandmother reference

[Pinhedd]

There's no counter argument to what is either trolling or sheer stupidity.

Re:grandmother reference

[sjames]

Which is why I'm not offering you one :-)

Re:grandmother reference

[mysidia]

In what way is that a car analogy?

Getting there.

The company that makes all the gas was concerned about people stealing gas, so to buy any gas from them, they make you install a specialized tamper-resistant fuel tank in your vehicle. They also install a paired radio-controlled device in your vehicle. And both devices are tied to the VIN of your car, so they cannot be removed or reused in a different car. If you buy a new car, you will need new equipment.

To obtain gas, you go to your retailer of choice, or you call your mail order company up on the phone to order by credit card. Either way, you get a "gas redemption" number.

In order to redeem your gas, you go to the pump, which is equipped with a tamper-resistant spigot. You insert the spigot in the proprietary tank-fill hole on the secure tank, then you enter in the redemption code you purchased.

Once you have entered the code, the spigot is locked into your tank, and the pump delivers a specified amount of two fluids, then ejects the nozzle, the pump and tank are then secured.

The tank is secured in that it is sealed when not fueling, and there is no way to transfer fluids to another tank: the gas has to be used in that vehicle.

Moreover, the tank will not release any gas to the vehicle or allow you to start the car, until you turn on the radio device, and it authorizes your vehicle to access the tank and start.

To help prevent gas theft, there is a feature where the tank itself measures how much fuel remaining that you are allowed to use. If the fuel level is higher than you are allowed to use, for example: if somehow you illegally added fuel without the use of a proper redemption code, then amounts of the two liquids will be mixed together to poison the fuel, preventing it from being used in a vehicle engine, and it will then be burned and released in a controlled manner

Some retailer was able to obtain a supply of the redemption codes at a lower price. A group of entrepreneurs pretended to be ordinary customers and purchased the redemption codes at a discount; they then proceeded to take the codes and resell them to customers in an area where gas is more expensive.

The paranoid maker of all gasoline got extremely upset by this, and decided to invalidate the redemption codes. But they also decided to declare as non-legitimate all gasoline purchased using the codes, so the secure tanks of many customers have declared their entire load legitimate and decided to destroy all their fuel, leaving the motorists stranded.

Re:grandmother reference

[david_thornley]

In general, Ubisoft will have no contractual relationship with the customers they screwed. The customers presumably gave money to somebody else, not Ubisoft. Even if there was a contract, and it was broken, that would not grant any copyright privileges. Ubisoft would probably be liable for the money spent, or perhaps the full cost of the game, but what keeps you from modifying the game and distributing lots of copies is copyright law, not a contract.

Re:grandmother reference

[david_thornley]

If the sale cost goes to the marginal cost of production, then the total revenue drops below what was necessary to pay for the development of the game. Also, the market is affected by copyright laws, which create artificial scarcity and a mini-monopoly.

Re:grandmother reference

[david_thornley]

Gray market activities do not harm the vendor. They provide additional customers. It may be that enough of them would buy the item at a higher price to make it worth the vendor's while to shut down a gray market, but that's speculation. From the vendor's point of view, it's better than piracy, since they get a profit from the sale, although not as much as they'd like.

Re: grandmother reference

[hackwrench]

Steam means that all my games will make it to my next PC.

Re:grandmother reference

[david_thornley]

Except that the keys are revoked at Ubisoft's discretion. There is no due process involved in destroying somebody's game.

There is no proof of stolen property. Nobody has shown me anything that makes the gray market illegitimate.

Re:grandmother reference

[nanoflower]

How do you know that. Ubisoft has given no information as to exactly why the keys were revoked. It could be that they were bought with stolen credit card numbers or it could be that the keys were just sold from non-official resellers but are still perfectly valid keys.

Even if the keys are sold by random people through various markets like G2A's marketplace that still doesn't mean the keys were stolen. As others have said they could be keys that weren't being used by people that bought new video cards that game with free games, or they could be keys bought in regions with cheaper prices. None of that is illegal though it is certainly frowned upon. The region issue can cause problems if a game is region locked but clearly if the people were playing for up to a year that couldn't be the case.

Until Ubisoft comes out with an official statement we can't know if the keys were 'stolen' or just bought from an un-official marketplace.

Re: grandmother reference

[hackwrench]

Luvinia, a free to play game got sold to another company when the first failed and you have to pay if you want to use your old account, but the game is still there and there are examples of other online games that became free to play after the original company went under.

Re: grandmother reference

[hackwrench]

But Ubisoft didn't offer to let the user makes up the difference, they took it outright.

Re:grandmother reference

[sjames]

That's why I say the sale price approaches the cost of production. It does not start right at it and stay there forever more.

As for copyright laws and mini-monopolies, those are factors that damage the health of the market.

In another message, I looked at Far Cry 3 and assuming recovery of development price over the 10 million sold and a development cost of 60 million, that would come out to $6 ea. Note that it was never $6 each or even close (even a used copy runs twice that now after they have already paid off all development costs). Because they don't know they will sell 10 million, I would expect a higher price at first and for the market to support that based on novelty. However, after that honeymoon period, a healthy market would exert considerable downward pressure on the price.

Simply, we don't have efficient healthy markets in the U.S.

Re:grandmother reference

[Pinhedd]

That's an incredibly naive view of business operations. Additional consumers are nice but if word gets around that a grey-market exists the vendor may end up seeing a decrease in net revenue even if they see an increase in customers. Any profit driven company will try to combat that. For example, the grey-market for post-secondary textbooks is huge and there have been some high profile lawsuits and challenges in recent years.

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You're falling into the trap of confusing ethics and the law. Whatever you -- or I, since I expect we'd agree -- think of the ethics of the situation, so far I haven't seen anything to suggest their actions in not respecting keys used other than under the conditions they were sold with is actually illegal. The law with respect to digital purchases, DRM, and remote access/activation schemes may be some anachronistic dinosaur, but if it's the law right now then complaining about the action on a forum like Slashdot isn't going to change that.

Re:grandmother reference

[rdnetto]

To counter your anecdote with my own, I got Left 4 Dead 2 for free on Steam at one point.
Prices fluctuate all the time, and a brick and mortar store is subject to different pressures than an online store.
Steam is popular because it frequently discounts games, and will even email you if a game on your wishlist is discounted.

Re:grandmother reference

[rdnetto]

I hope they didn't try this stunt on Australian customers. We have "parallel importation" legislation

For now, anyway. There have been attempts to put provisions blocking parallel legislation into the TPP and other treaties, although thankfully they've been unsuccessful so far.

Re:grandmother reference

[sjames]

Really, the law hasn't caught up to this sort of thing. It's not really illegal, nor is it particularly legal. Part of the problem is that it would cost a lot to hash it out and there's just not enough money involved unless it becomes a class action. But as a general principle, if someone pays you for something, you're not allowed to take it back unilaterally.

I have been speaking more of the moral/ethical position of it (which is all we have given the ambiguity of the law).

Meanwhile, I have never seen a EULA that actually had anything to say about this situation . I doubt it could be claimed that this was clearly pointed out to the people who bought the game at any time, before or after the sale.

Re:grandmother reference

[vux984]

No. A refund is a return payment made from a merchant to a customer. Refunds are not made to third parties that were never part of the original business transaction.

Ok. Agreed. Ubi shouldn't owe them a 'refund'. But they are the party that owes restitution here.

The customer should seek restitution from the middleman that made the fraudulent charge.

"fraudulent charge" is a pretty strong charge to make. The keys were sold legally in Eastern Europe by buyers who then exported them legally elsewhere.

The only "contradiction" would be to what Ubi -wants-. That doesn't amount to fraud. It is not fraud to buy something in a price discriminated market, and legally export the product.

Europe is very economically diverse. Germany has nearly 4x the per-capita GDP as Poland, which happens to be right next door. What's affordable to someone in Germany is not necessarily affordable to someone in Poland.

My city is very economically diverse. Less than a mile away are people making a fraction of what is typical in my neighborhood. Yet we both pay the same price for milk, cars, and movie rentals.

I hear your argument, but I'm not sure what makes the line between germany and poland a magical line the free market dare not cross.

That bike rack that you mentioned above is purchased outright, whereas Ubisoft's games are licensed.

Semantics. I *purchased* a license. I don't pretend I have any special exceptional copyright ownership of the underlying intellectual property any more than when I purchase a copy of a book... but I did *purchase* a license. The store had a "buy" button, I pressed it. A one time transaction was completed. I know own a license. Its listed as one of my games. And I can click a link to my "purchase history".

  There's a principle in law... if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then its a duck. (You see this principle applied in other areas too like when corporations dress up their employees as "independent contractors" and the law sees right through it.)

Many leasing companies will not allow the lessee to take the vehicle out of the country without permission.

A lease agreement is a negotiated several page document that both parties sign multiple times over. Pretty sure that's not a better analogy for buying a video game.

Region locked game consoles are a good example of this. Outright revoking access to the service is crude, which is why many publishers are switching to language-locked editions. A high-priced English-French-German-Spanish-Italian edition on one side, and a cheap Polish edition on the other. This can negatively affected ex-pats that don't speak the native language, but that's a very small group.

Yup. I agree they can do stuff like this. But you can take a region locked game console to North America and play games purchased in that region for it. They don't get to show up your house with a hammer and smash your console.

or you agreed to the ToS and accept the consequences of breaking them.

Which terms of service did I any one agree to before buying the key that indicated UBI could revoke the game if they weren't from the country the key originated from?

I don't deny they exist... but I'd like to see them.

Re:grandmother reference

[Pinhedd]

Ok. Agreed. Ubi shouldn't owe them a 'refund'. But they are the party that owes restitution here.

"fraudulent charge" is a pretty strong charge to make. The keys were sold legally in Eastern Europe by buyers who then exported them legally elsewhere.

There's no indication that legally made grey-market purchases were revoked, only those that were made using fraudulent credit card transactions. Ubisoft doesn't owe anyone anything for those. The original discussion was on what constitutes grey-marketeering.

My city is very economically diverse. Less than a mile away are people making a fraction of what is typical in my neighborhood. Yet we both pay the same price for milk, cars, and movie rentals.

I hear your argument, but I'm not sure what makes the line between germany and poland a magical line the free market dare not cross.

Milk and cars have very high marginal costs. In fact, many grocery stores sell milk below cost. I used to work as a retail manager in my late teens and the store that I worked at lost about $1.50 on every bag of milk that we sold.

The line between the various divisions of your city is at best distinguished by city bylaws and zoning policy so there's no real reason for there to be a massive price difference across the border given that there's no real barrier to import. A national border on the other hand is subject to customs when importing physical goods. It gets really murky when digital goods are involved. Now, there have been several unsuccessful attempts to block the import of discounted physical goods such as textbooks but these have been mostly unsuccessful.

Semantics. I *purchased* a license. I don't pretend I have any special exceptional copyright ownership of the underlying intellectual property any more than when I purchase a copy of a book... but I did *purchase* a license. The store had a "buy" button, I pressed it. A one time transaction was completed. I know own a license. Its listed as one of my games. And I can click a link to my "purchase history".

There's a principle in law... if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then its a duck. (You see this principle applied in other areas too like when corporations dress up their employees as "independent contractors" and the law sees right through it.)

The comparison that you're looking for is the de-jure relationship versus the de-facto relationship. You're absolutely right about it being used to prevent employers from ducking their obligations under various employment laws. However, a shrinkwrap licence is still a licence. Courts are less likely to read deeply into it, but it's still enforceable to an extent. If the publisher claims in the licence that they have the right to refuse service if a product is used outside of its region then it's unlikely that a court will force them to provide that service. In the case of a physical copy, they're not going to come to your house and take that physical copy away; in the case of a digital copy, they usually won't erase it from your hard disk drive but they may refuse to authenticate your login credentials. Many modern video games are designed such that any tangible element is largely useless without a service element as well.

A lease agreement is a negotiated several page document that both parties sign multiple times over. Pretty sure that's not a better analogy for buying a video game.

Video games include a terms of service agreement that is dozens of pages in length, a bike rack does not. It may not be signed repeatedly, but it is still a contract and both parties are bound by it.

Yup. I agree they can do stuff like this. But you can take a region locked game console to North America and play games purchased in that region for it. They don't get to show up your house with a hammer and smash your console.

Correct. They can how

Re:grandmother reference

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I suspect that in fact we probably agree on most of this issue then. The difficulty in this sort of case is that merely having a copy of software or other digital work (and thus fitting in just fine with traditional copyright law) is not sufficient to make that work useful if it has been artificially crippled with some sort of phone home functionality.

By its nature, that functionality might depend on a third party. That third party might have had nothing to do with the original sale to the person using the software/digital work. They may or may not want to make the software/work usable by the purchaser for commercial reasons. Most importantly at present, they may have no actual legal obligation to make the work useful even if every other deal in the process has been completely above board.

This creates a potential problem of abuse with DRM schemes, leading to the sort of case we've been discussing. It's also a real liability in terms of lots of things breaking if the authorising system is taken off-line and potentially its owning organisation isn't even there any more to be held responsible and make amends.

Sadly, I suspect there are about three elected representatives in the universe who are even close to understanding these issues. They have nowhere near enough influence to raise this issue at high levels within their legislative bodies alone, and even if they did, they'd be up against Big Software and Big Media concerned about copyright infringement and bribing other officials with substantial contributions to look that way first.

Re:grandmother reference

[wallsg]

Publishers should be required to sell their digital download licences at the same wholesale cost as the physical copy and then digital stores retail can compete on their margins.

(The real problem is the BS that you "license" the game instead of "buying" it so if the "license" terms are violated then the "license" is revoke. THAT's the bullshit that requires government action.)

Who would "require" this? Only one entity can: the government (at some level). Why in the world does the difference in the price of a computer game between different distribution channels require government price controls?

If you don't like the price then don't buy the damn game. If the price really is too high then they won't sell many and they won't profit. If they sell the games and profit then you're just WRONG that the price is too high. It's just too high for you. You're just farther down the demand curve.

People on the demand curve above where it intersects with the supply curve think it's a bargain and buy. Those at the intersection think it's fairly priced and probably buy. Those below it think it's too expensive and don't buy. That's how markets work, especially with non-essentials.

There are people who think it's worth paying full MSRP of $60 for a game on release day. There are others who won't buy it until it's on sale somewhere someday at $14.99 or even $4.99. Which ones are "right" about the price? Actually, all of them.

If you think that games never go on sale, check here.

Ubisoft is flat out wrong to cancel these keys and they should hit with a Class Action lawsuit, IMO. But there is absolutely NO reason for them to be forced to sell the game at ANY price, let alone at the same price for all distribution channels. They could spend a few million to develop a game and then bury it in a landfill if they want. They have NO OBLIGATION to offer it for sale* ** and you have NO RIGHT to buy it.

* - unless specified in the contract signed with the developers of the game, likely due to a deal based on profits or revenues and not a fixed price.

** - and the fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders to prudently manage and invest the company's (and therefore the shareholders') money.

Re:grandmother reference

[DrXym]

Yes when it was flatline sales. It costs Steam very little to toss out free copies of its own game - cents perhaps. That's when digital can be an advantage. It doesn't excuse the MSRP prices for new titles.

Re: grandmother reference

[softwarek]

This doesn't mean your game will make it to next pc. At any moment steam can delete any game it wants. People have to seem to forget instead of owning games and apps anymore you lease them. You have given up all rights to software. No more letting your kid brother play your old games. Or selling your old games at one of the brick and mortar game store and using the credit towards something new. This is like buying a used car and chevy coming to repo the car because I bought it a place cheaper than the chevy dealer. Someone already paid chevy for the car what happens after that shouldn't be any of chevy business . same with software companies . what happens to the game in this case after it was bought at a store or whatever it none of there business after that. Steam has gotten people hooked with lost leaders. It a business term google it. Once you paid that heavy discounted price you gave your rights and I fought for my rights for myself and everyone else in the usa and people are giving them up to these corporation without even a wimper. Stop buying from these digital versions and only buy retail box and suing them when a game or app full of bugs. Software the only thing we seem to buy and think ok if it doesn't work right. If you bought a blender and it didn't work til they sent you a new blade a month later you return it and tell them to fuc. Themselves. You have to stand up for your rights and not take this crap. It time for the revolution and tell corporation we want take this anymore. Don't buy there next game that in uplay oh my you might miss a game. It the only way change will happen is if we duevit with our wallets

Re:grandmother reference

[Shadowkahn]

Not everyone goes to a foreign country for vacation. Some go for extended work trips. If I'm spending 6 months somewhere for work, I might buy a game or two.

This is just another example of why the license system for media content does not work and is 100% anti-consumer.

When I buy a book, I'm not buying a license to read the book, and the publisher is not allowed to break into my house and steal the book if I bought the book in a foreign country. I fail to understand why anyone would think such things are OK just because you are buying electronic media.

At any rate, I'd love to see a court case come of this; when I buy a license for media, I expect that license to be valid in perpetuity unless otherwise stated up front at the time of sale. And if the company decides somewhere down the road that it's not valid, and steals the license back from me, they should get sued.

Re:grandmother reference

[AK Marc]

35 official Ubisoft resellers sold keys. Rather then honoring keys sold through official channels, Ubisoft revoked them, and refunded them. That seems silly.

Also note, the total number of keys purchased fraudulently was not disclosed, nor was the number voided. Apparently, Ubisoft is banning and making people demand a refund to get a refund. Some people may think that they did something wrong, and won't ask for a refund. This will result in theft by Ubisoft. Because anyone who doesn't ask for a refund won't get it.

The "proper" way to handle this is to honor all the keys and try to recover money from the fraudulent distributor.

Re:grandmother reference

[rtb61]

In point of fact if you are buying games from Steam, there are just so, so many of them, the only time to buy them is on discount or package deal. So buying a bundle of games during the specials season and then playing them for the rest of the year. This combined with F2P MMO really does provide all the gaming even the most intense gamer needs.

There is absolutely no excuse for buying games when they are not on special, as for the uPlay B$, well, don't buy any uPlay games at all, except those you buy, by accident on Steam discount. That one being Farcry with the B$ compulsory cut scenes which you can only get rid of by buying an expansion so screw Ubisoft (an interesting new scheme to kill re-playability, long annoying cut scenes which become intolerable upon replay, what will the asshats think of next).

If you are paying full retail, you should buy the box set at a retail store and screw over the publishers profit. Don't forget to return the game when they kill your licence and wait a year before buying it again at a steep discount with at least some of the bugs removed.

Re:grandmother reference

[wolja]

It's really the only viable answer to piracy that's left and publishers are embracing it wholeheartedly.

....

It turns out that there's another answer to piracy that works: sell your product in a way that's easy to use at a reasonable price. Stop worrying about pirates and start worrying about customers. Someone who wouldn't buy your game anyway who pirates it is not a lost sale, but someone who can't be bothered to put up with your treating them like a criminal and so doesn't buy from you is. Buying a game from gog.com is easier than pirating and, if you factor in the cost of your time, probably cheaper as well.

Sorry you'll never progress in the content sales arena when you speak sense. The DRM touts will now attack your logic with utter bullshit.

Give me a product I want for a reasonable price and I will happily hand over my money, because I feel that I'm getting something valuable in return. Don't, and... well, computer games are not the only form of entertainment available.

More sense. The drones, human variety, are coming for you

Re:grandmother reference

[TerryC101]

If I was a Canadian that went across the border into the US to buy a car because it was cheaper doesn't mean that the car company can come and tow it.

Re: grandmother reference

[jp10558]

I got a PS4 for christmas, I've stacked it under my PS3. I figure PS is lesser of 3 gaming evils - supporting MS into another attempted monopoly, all the crap of Windows gaming as here, and Sony's stupidity. But their hardware shouldn't get more broken, and in my limited game play time, hasn't acros PS3 or PS4. Of course, I don't game online or pay for PSN so that didn't affect me.

What is the "shit" about the PS4 though?

Re: grandmother reference

[mSparks43]

having to pay for online play and regular crashes for a start.

Re:grandmother reference

[AK Marc]

No.

Yes

35 merchants for a third party reseller sold the keys that someone bought from EA Origin using stolen credit cards.

Yes, Kinguin, an authorized reseller of Ubisoft, resold keys that were later invalidated for having come through "questionable" channels.

Rather than honoring the keys bought through an authroized reseller, Ubisoft, canceled them and is offering refunds (for the people who bought a real key from a real and authorized reseller).

That should be illegal. The "legal" answer would be for Ubisoft to honor all the keys that have been purchased, and track down the illegal person in the chain and hold them responsible, not hold the end user responsible for having bought a key from an authorized Ubisoft reseller.

Re:grandmother reference

[TheRaven64]

A lot of the games I've bought from GOG.com have been £2-3. I wouldn't have bought them at £10-20 - many take me 6 months or so to get around to playing, but at that price (i.e. less than a pint of beer) I'm willing to buy a game that looks like it might be fun, just on the off-chance that it is. For some games (e.g. the Daedalic and Wajet Eye ones) I've then gone and bought the publisher's entire catalog after trying a couple, because I know that I'm definitely going to get good value for money from them. Even the short games are a few hours of entertainment per pound.

If you can't make money selling the product at a reasonable price then there wasn't enough demand for the product to justify making it. I just paid about £10 for the remastered edition of Grim Fandango (and pre-ordered it). I imagine that this is a lot more than the publisher needs to cover developer costs, licensing costs, and make a fairly good profit, but it's a price that I'm very willing to pay because I enjoyed the original a lot (but played it on a friend's computer so don't own a copy and haven't been able to re-play it, plus apparently getting it to work on a modern OS is somewhat painful). I'm about a quarter of the way through it so far, and it's money very well spent.

Your question applies to any goods or services: if you can't sell it for enough money to cover the costs of making it, then don't make it. Often the optimal price is non-intuitive. There was a Harvard study a few years ago that found that the optimal price for maximising profit on music was about 5/track. At this price, people are willing to buy an album or two because a friend recommends it, often without listening to it (or perhaps only having heard one track) first. If you pay a dollar for an album and only listen to it a couple of times, you don't feel too bad. If you pay ten dollars, you do and you think a lot more carefully about future purchases. I've bought some games from GOG for a couple of dollars that I've played for under half an hour before getting bored with them. At that price, I don't care and I'm willing to take a chance on the next one.

First Sale

[AK Marc]

Well, it's final. The Right of First Sale has been revoked. Soap, Ballot, and Jury boxes haven't worked. What's next?

Re:First Sale

[Immerman]

I'm not sure defeatist is quite the right word - after all there are four boxes guaranteed by the US constitution, though I doubt Marc is seriously advocating the last

Re:First Sale

[Immerman]

Right. It also doesn't obligate insurance companies to honor your policy - there's other laws for that.

Re:First Sale

[AK Marc]

I'm riling up those who spend all their time focusing on the last and never using the first 3. That, and in most cases, the individual who doesn't like what the mega-corp does has no recourse. A huge lawsuit for a game? That'll never work, and a class-action will have them give you back 3/4th of a valid key. There may be a backing-away from this, but the end goal of everyone selling in the US was to revoke the right of first sale.

Re:First Sale

[BitterOak]

First sale doctrine doesn't obligate Ubisoft to honor the key.

Exactly right! What a lot of people don't understand is that the First Sale Doctrine is a defense not an offense. In other words, if you buy a copyrighted item, like a book, and resell it, the First Sale Doctrine protects you from getting successfully sued by the copyright holder for doing so. In other words, it is a defense. It does not however, put any obligations on the publisher to provide any support to ensure that these later customers can use the product. I'm not saying Ubisoft is doing the right thing here, but this really has nothing to do with the First Sale Doctrine.

Re:First Sale

[turkeydance]

yes you can. reinsurers will take your current policy as collateral toward their new policy. it sucks, but it's legal.

Re:First Sale

[exomondo]

yes you can. reinsurers will take your current policy as collateral toward their new policy.

that isn't the same thing as selling your insurance policy to someone else nor does it have anything to do with first sale doctrine.

Re:First Sale

[AK Marc]

When I have a receipt for the property, and the person I bought it from has a receipt, all the way back to Ubisoft who sold it, it doesn't sound like "stolen property" at all. That they've convinced people that buying a valid key from Ubisoft is theft, means it's all broken. That was my point.

Re:First Sale

[AK Marc]

First sale doctrine (in the US). You think you bought something, but you didn't. Not your game, not your house, not your car. Nothing is yours.

Re:First Sale

[Gr8Apes]

People are still buying Ubisoft? Why? That's a serious question actually, why would you pay money for some DRM infested crap that corrupts your system? There's no game so important I'll corrupt my system to play it. Any Ubisoft game can wait until it goes on sale on GOG, or be avoided forever. No loss here.

Re:First Sale

[Nemyst]

If they're targeting key resellers, they aren't. The key resellers were the people covered by the first sale doctrine, whereas you as a consumer buy the key "second hand" from the reseller and therefore cannot claim any support under that doctrine.

Re:First Sale

[AK Marc]

And how am I supposed to know that buying it at Target is "legit" and EB Games isn't? In all cases, the end user went to a Ubisoft reseller. I couldn't find anything that indicated there is an "approved" list, so the user can't know who is authorized and who isn't.

Re:First Sale

[kenshin33]

by the cops, may be with court order!

Re:First Sale

[arth1]

Exactly right! What a lot of people don't understand is that the First Sale Doctrine is a defense not an offense. In other words, if you buy a copyrighted item, like a book, and resell it, the First Sale Doctrine protects you from getting successfully sued by the copyright holder for doing so. In other words, it is a defense. It does not however, put any obligations on the publisher to provide any support to ensure that these later customers can use the product.

Neither does it give them a right to burn my book.

The problem here is that you don't buy a game. You buy a license to use a game. They revoke the license, which is their right, but by doing so, you are no longer bound by the license terms either, which includes the payment you made. Depending on the jurisdiction, you might have a good case for winning a small courts claim or similar, covering the purchase price and reasonable legal expenses.

Re:First Sale

[DrXym]

The right of first sale doesn't apply to software licences. You're buying a licence to a game, not a physical thing that you can sell.

Re:First Sale

[IamTheRealMike]

Legally speaking that would be a dispute between you and the bogus reseller. They sold you something that was effectively counterfeit. There's lots of well established law in this area.

Re:First Sale

[StillAnonymous]

Torrent seed box.

Re:First Sale

[DrXym]

That is not true: you are NOT "buying a license to a game", you're buying the game.

Sorry it is true and wishful thinking doesn't change it. Virtually all commercial software is covered by a EULA - end user licence agreement. You are buying a licence to use the software under the terms described by the EULA. If you run afoul of the terms then your right to use the software may be void or other penalties may apply.

In this particular case I suspect UPlay, Origin, Steam are reasoning that the licence is non transferrable, and since it WAS transferred from one person to another it has become void. That sucks but it's well known that they do this and if you want to avoid it, don't buy licences off some reseller.

Re:First Sale

[thegarbz]

Are you kidding? Have you played the latest Assassins Creed?

Ok I joke, I never found the series appealing, but people do. They will go out of their way to buy the next game in the franchise despite the bugs, the problems, the poor performance, and will excuse even the crap gameplay and really pushing the friendship storyline because OMG Assassins Creed is so cool.

The same can be said for most other games. If every slashdot user decided to boycot Ubisoft (and many already have) then it won't make an ounce of difference in the longrun.

Re:First Sale

[mriswith]

Care to explain how ubisofts' "DRM infested crap" corrupts my system when it's not currently running?

Have you actually looked at the software or are you like most people online just repeating things you have heard and read without any clue if it's actually true?

Re:First Sale

[drinkypoo]

You buy a license to use a game. They revoke the license, which is their right, but by doing so, you are no longer bound by the license terms either, which includes the payment you made.

Well, no. The license is something you enter into after you make the payment, hence the assertion that shrinkwrap licenses should not have any weight: you're not getting anything for them, you already got it. This online activation bullshit is a way around that: You're getting online activation.

Re:First Sale

[omnichad]

We all knew that the DMCA (via DRM) was going to be used to break the first sale doctrine. This is just one more example.

Re:First Sale

[Cederic]

Ass Creed Black Flag has had a lot of compliments from people with no reason to promote Ubisoft games and no great loyalty to the series.

As someone still looking for a modern equivalent to Sea Dogs the only reason I haven't tried it is Ubisoft and Uplay.

Re:First Sale

[Gr8Apes]

While games with DRM based on online codes is at least semi-problematic for reasons that have been listed ad-nauseum, my original writing off of Ubisoft was due to the always on DRM stance they took a long time ago. Apparently they've retracted that stance in 2012, but after reviewing their game list for the past few years, I see why I was unaware of it - not a single one is on my potential "to-play" list so no interest in anything related to Ubisoft. Honestly, I was surprised they were still in business.

Re:First Sale

[Gr8Apes]

Are you kidding? Have you played the latest Assassins Creed?

Nope, and I have no interest in it either. My interests lay with developers like Black Isle, iD, Valve, and Bioware in the distant past and a bunch of independents today are more likely to get my dollar. I'm not interested in massively online game play, unlike most, because I simply have 0 time available for such game play. Heck, even posting on /. takes too much time some days.

Re:First Sale

[AK Marc]

The assertion in this case is that the EULA is violated if the first End User agrees to it and abides by it.

That proves a lack of legal standing of the EULA, and EULAs should be judged illegal. In practice, any boiler plate contract not written by the State is illegal. Except EULAs, and sometimes cell phone contracts.

In this particular case I suspect UPlay, Origin, Steam are reasoning that the licence is non transferrable, and since it WAS transferred from one person to another it has become void.

So it's a violation to buy something from anyone other than uPlay, Origin, or Steam. If you buy it off the shelf in Target/Wal-Mart, or online at EB Games/Amazon, it obviously was "re-sold" (distributed) at least once. Thus, is invalid.

"Videogame makers declare video games illegal" (unless you buy directly from them) should be the headlines run in the NYT. Because that's exactly what they are saying. Only the publishers know which keys they'll honor, and the end buyer can't ever know, unless they buy directly from the publisher.

and if you want to avoid it, don't buy licences off some reseller.

Yeah, well, EB games should be sued, if they don't have that warning printed in every store in large print. As well as Amazon and thousands of others.

Re:First Sale

[DrXym]

Yeah, well, EB games should be sued, if they don't have that warning printed in every store in large print. As well as Amazon and thousands of others.

EB games don't trade in digital games. They trade in physical media. And unless there is a registration code in the box then it's implicitly transferable.

Re:First Sale

[exomondo]

First sale doctrine (in the US). You think you bought something, but you didn't. Not your game, not your house, not your car. Nothing is yours.

Ok so clearly you have no idea what First Sale Doctrine actually is. It has to do with the ability of rightsholders to control content after it has been sold for the first time, so no, it is nothing to do with your house or your car.

Re:First Sale

[AK Marc]

So the First Sale Doctrine has nothing to do with my car? That would mean that I'm not allowed to re-sell my car without Ford's permission. Is that what you are saying?

Re:First Sale

[exomondo]

So the First Sale Doctrine has nothing to do with my car?

Correct.

That would mean that I'm not allowed to re-sell my car without Ford's permission.

No it would not.

Is that what you are saying?

No.

Re:First Sale

[Munchr]

No, you bought a non-transferable license. If you bought a physical copy, then you bought a real tangible and transferable asset, subject to first sale. An electronic copy is legally different in many jurisdictions. Until everyone, everywhere, has law or court case precedence guaranteeing the first sale right to electronic purchases we will see many more of these actions by companies that want their cut of all sales, from the first and all proceeding secondary sales.

Re:First Sale

[AK Marc]

Then how does the Right of First Sale have nothing to do with my car, when it applies to my car?

Seems the only one here that doesn't know what it is is you.

Re:First Sale

[david_thornley]

Depends on the jurisdiction, I guess. Some courts have ruled that a transfer of money for a good without any other agreement is a sale, no matter what the vendor says it is.

Re:First Sale

[AK Marc]

Now if you have educated yourself on this can you see how ridiculous your assertion that this applies to your house or your car is?

My car and house are covered under copyright. The ECU and other things are copyrighted. I have notes in my owner's manual to that effect. The structure of my house is a "creative work" as asserted by all architects everywhere, and thus is also copyrighted.

What's your problem? That you don't know that the software in your car is copyrighted?

Re:First Sale

[david_thornley]

There has been DRM-infested crap that has damaged computers. There was one scheme (the name escapes me now) that trashed writable optical drives.

Re:First Sale

[exomondo]

Then how does the Right of First Sale have nothing to do with my car, when it applies to my car?

We're talking about the First Sale Doctrine, it doesn't apply to your car.

Seems the only one here that doesn't know what it is is you.

No, it is definitely you. So please explain to me what you think the First Sale Doctrine is.

Re:First Sale

[AK Marc]

Yes, the "no, you tell me" answer. It's not a phonorecord, but the ECU of my car is copyrighted. Am I allowed to transfer the license to my ECU (and the car along with it)?

My house is copyrighted. It's a "creative work" as are all architectural designs, unless proven otherwise.

But you are asserting that it doesn't apply to those copyrighted items. Why?

Re:First Sale

[exomondo]

Yes, the "no, you tell me" answer. It's not a phonorecord, but the ECU of my car is copyrighted. Am I allowed to transfer the license to my ECU (and the car along with it)?

I'm not sure why you said "car" up until this point when you are specifically referring to the ECU component of a car that has one, which of course not all cars do. Were you trying to be intentionally misleading? ECUs can be replaced irrespective of the First Sale doctrine because that copyright is not tied to the car but to the ECU.

But that is irrelevant anyway, unlike the case of Ubisoft revoking keys for games no ECU has a requirement that ties it to an owner but if it did then it would still satisfy the First Sale doctrine because it is not about being able to use the goods after they were sold but to be able to sell the copyrighted goods in the first place.

So I still don't see how you're relating an ECU to re selling insurance policies, or to Ubisoft game keys for that matter.

Re:First Sale

[AK Marc]

But that is irrelevant anyway, unlike the case of Ubisoft revoking keys for games no ECU has a requirement that ties it to an owner but if it did then it would still satisfy the First Sale doctrine because it is not about being able to use the goods after they were sold but to be able to sell the copyrighted goods in the first place.

So if GM remotely disabled your car through OnStar because you bought/sold it used, that's perfectly acceptable, under the law, and by your personal moral code?

View this as an opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

If we can manage to sue Ubisoft and win to force allowing these sorts of resales, it'd be a huge step towards recognition of the rights of digital purchases.

Time for a class action lawsuit

[Anonymous Coward]

this shit has to be put down HARD.

Re:Time for a class action lawsuit

[laughingskeptic]

Wouldn't it be bigger pain be for UbiSoft if innocent victims all sued in small claims court? UbiSoft would loose almost all cases by default. Class action lawsuits only exist to make attorneys rich. Settlement money never reaches the consumer. If the consumer is lucky they get some sort of discount coupon that has no value if they no longer want to business with the company sued.

Re:Time for a class action lawsuit

[david_thornley]

If UbiSoft has a presence in your jurisdiction, by all means sue in small claims court. IANAL, but I wouldn't expect small claims courts to have much power over companies in other states or countries.

"Fraudulent"

[sd4f]

It's probably a case of companies buying keys in a cheap region, and selling them to people who otherwise would have to pay more in their region.

Re:"Fraudulent"

[buckfeta2014]

Even if that was the case, it would prove that currency unity needs to be properly applied. Ubisoft wasn't the only company to recently change their prices related to current exchange rates. http://phandroid.com/2015/01/0...

Re:"Fraudulent"

[Pinhedd]

That's called grey-market operations. There's nothing fraudulent about it, but manufacturers are going to increasingly greater lengths to prevent grey market activities. Games that are sold in low price markets often have limited languages, region-locked multiplayer, sanitized art assets, etc...

Re:"Fraudulent"

[Black Parrot]

And I'm guessing that the publishers who use region codes cry like babies whenever governments impose artificial barriers to free trade.

Re:"Fraudulent"

[sd4f]

Probably, the older I get, the more cynical I get, and all I can see is that business tends to lobby government for freedom from competition.

Fuck Ubisoft

[Anonymous Coward]

They make shitty games and fuck over their customers. I avoid all their games, even the good ones. They are scum.

Re:Fuck Ubisoft

[RavenLrD20k]

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within wasn't so bad when I got it for the Game Cube, even though the graphics were rather shitty compared to what the GC was capable of. Beyond that though... I couldn't tell you of an Ubi game worth a damn. Even the PoP games that came after were complete shit. And the ones on the SNES were nigh unplayable.

Why you shouldnt buy anything with revocable DRM

[Crashmarik]

It's not about piracy it's about control, and what you "BOUGHT" isn't really yours.

In this case UBISOFT has a dispute with gray marketeers and decides to take it out on the customers instead of taking it to the courts with the people they have a problem with they lash out at the customers, taking advantage of the fact the customers will likely have to suck it up.

Smart move, Ubisoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you want piracy? Because this is how you get piracy.

Re:Smart move, Ubisoft

[reboot246]

That was the most intelligent post in the entire discussion and I don't have even one mod point to give you.

Re:Smart move, Ubisoft

[Splab]

Not only will this produce more piracy of the games - they are giving ammo to piracy advocates.

You wouldn't steal from good guy Steam, but you would steal from evil overlord UBISOFT!

Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[tepples]

You still have the ballot box. Vote against Ubisoft with your euros, dollars, or whatever: stop buying Ubisoft games. Buy games in the same genre from their competitors and email your purchases (and reasoning) to Ubisoft support.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

You still have the ballot box. Vote against Ubisoft with your euros, dollars, or whatever: stop buying Ubisoft games. Buy games in the same genre from their competitors and email your purchases (and reasoning) to Ubisoft support.

Yes, buy them from the likes of Microsoft who, after 9 years, changed their Xbox policy so that once you delete local content of a delisted game, you lose that content. They made no announcement, gave no notice of games being delisted, just changed their polices and screwed over their customers.

Or from Steam, who forces patches on you that can completely change the product you purchased. Bought a GFWL game? It's now a Steam Edition game.

Or Origins... *giggles*

They're all just as bad as the other because no one is willing to put up the money to fight them.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

Except the car is under my control. XBL games are not. They limit your ability to perform backups (no drives larger than 32GB), ban your console if you try to install a larger HDD, etc. For 9 years you always had the ability to go back and re-download the content, that was the understanding when you purchased the item. Then suddenly they change the terms so that's no longer the case?

I would need 8 Xboxes or 63 USB drives to backup my content.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

So you're saying Microsoft went and remotely erased your games or did you? If it was the former, then you may have an argument. If it was the latter, then the blame is solely yours.

Actually, in my case I didn't even get a chance to download it. I purchased a game December 3rd, sometime between now and then it was delisted, when I went to download it less than 60 days after purchase it was no longer possible.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[OhPlz]

You can quite easily disable updates in Steam per game. Are you saying they push updates even after you've disabled them?

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

So you're saying Microsoft went and remotely erased your games or did you? If it was the former, then you may have an argument. If it was the latter, then the blame is solely yours.

Besides, how is it my fault that I purchased a bunch of games under one set of terms (including the ability to re-download) then having the terms arbitrarily changed to a set of terms I would never have purchased under? It's a bait and switch scam.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[jonwil]

The newest game on the Wikipedia "list of Ubisoft games" that I have bought, pirated or played is Riven and that wasn't even a Ubisoft game at the time (Ubisoft bought the company that had the rights some time in the future)

I haven't purchased, played or pirated anything from Activision Blizzard recently either. (the newest game I can find on Wikipedia that I remember playing was one of the really old Tony Hawks games so before they became the scumbags that they are today)

My gaming dollars as of late have gone to TT Games (for The LEGO Movie) and Bethesda Softworks (for Oblivion 3) so I am doing my bit not to support the publishers that do evil crap like this.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[newcastlejon]

The ballot box has nothing to do with euros, dollars, or what...
Who am I kidding?

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

You can quite easily disable updates in Steam per game. Are you saying they push updates even after you've disabled them?

Steam's current setup is that you can disable automatic updates on a per-game basis, however, only until you try to play it next at which time it forces the update on you. You can run in offline mode for up to 6 months, losing a huge chunk of Steam/some games in the process, but after 6 months you have to go online to re-validate your DRM and bam - updates.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[aliquis]

Bought a GFWL game? It's now a Steam Edition game.

"Oh no!" *BOOM* (Lemmings or Worms reference. I'm not sure.)

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[Skidborg]

People actually do run servers that do that. They're called pirates.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[Skidborg]

Which games specifically become terrible after they change to "New Steam Version"?

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[Gr8Apes]

Wow, I just went through the list. It's like someone went through the game catalogue and listed every game I don't own nor want to own. How is Ubisoft in business? Except for one game from 2009, there's not a single title on the list that I own or have played or wanted to play that Ubisoft was involved with since 2002 (and they were merely distributors for that one). That's absolutely amazing. I stopped in the late 90s, it appears a long string of losers as far as I'm concerned. (I will mention that I own Far Cray, but that came as part of a graphics card package, was never installed, and Crytek was the owner/publisher at the time.)

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

Which games specifically become terrible after they change to "New Steam Version"?

What does it matter? The point is that if you buy software for a specific feature and someone patches it out they've fundamentally altered the product you paid for. The car analogy everyone is so fond of: Would you allow a company to change the colour of your car? It's not terrible if they do - it's just a colour after all. What about the body style? The engine?

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

I don't expect them to keep it available forever, I expect them to warn me of a fundamental change in their standard procedures and give me notice that the content is about to become inaccessible. In fact, section 2.5 of their terms of service states that they WILL provide notice - they never do though.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

oh and btw, Microsoft VP said they expect people to be able to access their content for 25+ years... why would I expect less than their stated claims?

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[AK Marc]

Then you should be able to do a chargeback on your credit card (always buy everything with a credit card). And if you didn't use a card, you can sue them.

Complaing to others about how you were wronged, but are too indignant to do anything about it will just make you look silly, and get you ignored.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[AK Marc]

You agreed to their terms. If you didn't, you need to complain to them, and if they ignore it sue them. Anything else is agreement with the new terms.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[jeek]

Doesn't Microsoft also charge $50 a year for the XBox Live service?

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[Skidborg]

The only New Steam Version game I own is Company of Heroes... which repairs the multiplayer services that were lost due to server shutdowns. In other words, they're restoring the engine of my car, for free, that the original supporting company allowed to die.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[AK Marc]

He's lost everything they can take already. Disable the network on the console, then chargeback. If they disable more out of spite, file a small-claims case against them. They will lose and it'll cost 10x your loss for them to lose in court.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[f3rret]

Which games specifically become terrible after they change to "New Steam Version"?

Company of Heroes took out LAN game support.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[f3rret]

The only New Steam Version game I own is Company of Heroes... which repairs the multiplayer services that were lost due to server shutdowns. In other words, they're restoring the engine of my car, for free, that the original supporting company allowed to die.

Also took out lan support.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[shione]

Or from Steam, who forces patches on you that can completely change the product you purchased. Bought a GFWL game? It's now a Steam Edition game.

And that is horrible how? Instead of having to sign in twice to get into the game, you only have to sign in once. Some games are even worse like GTA where you have to sign into steam AND gfwl AND rockstar just to play single player. Having gfwl fuck off and die is a good thing for everyone. Blame microsoft for making GFWL so shit in the first place and then letting it die a slow death to try and drive pc gamers to the xbox. If it wasnt for the game turning into a steam edition, you wouldnt even be able to play that copy of the game you spent your hard earned dollars on anymore!

Why is it steams fault for a patch that changes the game into something else when, unless its a valve game, it is not valves responsibility for a poor patch. I can still remember when it was most common to get pc games on disc at the shops. You would take it home then find for yourself the latest patch. if they were incremental patches then you had to download and apply each one in turn and hope that the patching works right and doesnt fuck things up. At least with steam it takes care of sourcing patches for you so you can worry less about bugs in the game and playing the game instead. Auto patching also ensures everyone playing online is on the same version for multiplayer. If a patch changes your game into something else (and i know it does happen like with ns2) blame the developer for it. They are the ones that wrote the patch.

Or Origins... *giggles*

They're all just as bad as the other because no one is willing to put up the money to fight them.

Good thing they only have a few good games so if you boycott them youre not missing much when there are other great games around.

Yes, buy them from the likes of Microsoft who, after 9 years, changed their Xbox policy so that once you delete local content of a delisted game, you lose that content. They made no announcement, gave no notice of games being delisted, just changed their polices and screwed over their customers.

Well that company you were pissing on before (steam) lets you keep and download games you bought even after they have been removed from steam for whatever reason.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy from http://www.gog.com/!

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[Daniel Hoffmann]

GTA San Andreas update removed several tracks from the game radio.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[sociocapitalist]

So you're saying Microsoft went and remotely erased your games or did you? If it was the former, then you may have an argument. If it was the latter, then the blame is solely yours.

Actually, in my case I didn't even get a chance to download it. I purchased a game December 3rd, sometime between now and then it was delisted, when I went to download it less than 60 days after purchase it was no longer possible.

Bitdefender now charges for the right to download software more than 15 days after purchase.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

That would be illegal in the jurisdiction I live in.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

The only New Steam Version game I own is Company of Heroes... which repairs the multiplayer services that were lost due to server shutdowns. In other words, they're restoring the engine of my car, for free, that the original supporting company allowed to die.

I own that as well, that one they released a second version and left the original alone.

They also removed the key from the original purchase when they foisted the new version on people so that they wouldn't be able to re-sell their game.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

Or from Steam, who forces patches on you that can completely change the product you purchased. Bought a GFWL game? It's now a Steam Edition game.

And that is horrible how? ... you wouldnt even be able to play that copy of the game you spent your hard earned dollars on anymore!

It's horrible because the impetus for the purchase was Xbox achievements. It's horrible because it sets a precedent that they are somehow allowed to change products you've purchased into completely different products. Sure, you may have hate for GFWL - I didn't. Also, GFWL servers are still up and running, I wouldn't have lost the ability to play anything - the odd developer doubled up (steam & gfwl multiplayer) others didn't patch.

Why is it steams fault for a patch that changes the game into something else when, unless its a valve game, it is not valves responsibility for a poor patch.

It's Steam's insistence on patches on people is necessary that creates the problem. It removes a person's ability to choose whether or not to apply a patch released by the developer. If the developer released a patch that converted GFWL to Steam and that's something you wanted, great! If not, you simply don't apply it and continue to use GFWL. Sure it might mean you can't connect to everyone for MP, but the choice remains with the person who made the purchase not with the distributor of the game.

Yes, buy them from the likes of Microsoft who, after 9 years, changed their Xbox policy so that once you delete local content of a delisted game, you lose that content. They made no announcement, gave no notice of games being delisted, just changed their polices and screwed over their customers.

Well that company you were pissing on before (steam) lets you keep and download games you bought even after they have been removed from steam for whatever reason.

Yes they do, Microsoft had the same policy. Then they decided one day "nah, we don't want to do it that way anymore" - what happens when Steam makes the same choice?

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

Umm Games for windows live is dead as a door knob, you wanna still play your game?

Yes, I do. You may not get it but Xbox achievements is a hobby of mine - that's why I made the purchases in the first place, simply for the GFWL functionality. I don't care about an active MP scene, which you might not understand either. It's just what I prefer but because the people at Steam thought the way you do, they decided they knew best for everyone and forced patches on people. I'm not saying the devs were wrong to release the patch, most people would want it, but Steam forcing it on people is wrong.

Hell, Microsoft tried it once with a security update for Windows and people went ape shit. Just because it's entertainment the rules are somehow different?

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

Assassin's Creed is the reason. On Xbox they are number 10, 12, 30, 49, 60, 173, 212, 227, 1010, and 1024 most popular games (based on sample of ~300,000 gamers and 3,106 games)

Far Cry helps a bit with Far Cry 3 at #64 and Far Cry 2 at #104.

Trials at #151

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[sociocapitalist]

That would be illegal in the jurisdiction I live in.

Under what basis?

What jurisdiction?

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[Cederic]

Well, you're fucked if MS switch off GFWL, the rumour of which is the main reason so many games have been patched to remove it.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

Ontario - Consumer Protection Act. After 30 days they can cancel the sale but they cannot charge extra for executing the sale that would not have been charged otherwise.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

Well, you're fucked if MS switch off GFWL, the rumour of which is the main reason so many games have been patched to remove it.

The rumor proved to be untrue, GFWL is still up and running.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[Munchr]

The jurisdiction that apparently permits him to walk back into a store after 15 days and remove a 2nd copy from the shelf without paying a second time?

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[rdnetto]

You can quite easily disable updates in Steam per game. Are you saying they push updates even after you've disabled them?

Steam's current setup is that you can disable automatic updates on a per-game basis, however, only until you try to play it next at which time it forces the update on you. You can run in offline mode for up to 6 months, losing a huge chunk of Steam/some games in the process, but after 6 months you have to go online to re-validate your DRM and bam - updates.

Just make a backup copy of the game before you run Steam. Last I checked, they let you cancel the update if you want to play *right now*.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[f3rret]

No LAN support means "local multiplayer available without the matchmaking service"
I was in a place where we had no internet access but we wanted to play Company of Heroes. Old Version allowed this, new Steam version does not,.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[sociocapitalist]

Ontario - Consumer Protection Act. After 30 days they can cancel the sale but they cannot charge extra for executing the sale that would not have been charged otherwise.

But they provided the product to you. The additional charge would be to provide the product to you again should you ever lose it. (ie lose the install software and whatever backup of it)

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[JMJimmy]

Ontario - Consumer Protection Act. After 30 days they can cancel the sale but they cannot charge extra for executing the sale that would not have been charged otherwise.

But they provided the product to you. The additional charge would be to provide the product to you again should you ever lose it. (ie lose the install software and whatever backup of it)

Ahh that's different than what was stated... 15 days after delivery is different than 15 days after purchase.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[sociocapitalist]

Ontario - Consumer Protection Act. After 30 days they can cancel the sale but they cannot charge extra for executing the sale that would not have been charged otherwise.

But they provided the product to you. The additional charge would be to provide the product to you again should you ever lose it. (ie lose the install software and whatever backup of it)

Ahh that's different than what was stated... 15 days after delivery is different than 15 days after purchase.

No, it's the same in this case as the product is downloadable upon purchase.

Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars

[aliquis]

(What I really failed to see is how something called "Games For Windows Live" could be any better than Steam. Just sounds like it's not. But I don't know. GOG likely kicks Steam ass but it's not the standard so .. Sadly the standard is kinda no standard at all so one is doomed whatever version one pick. And that really suck. Next up Xbox for Windows 10.)

I have an idea..

[grasshoppa]

STOP FUCKING GIVING UBISOFT MONEY.

By this point, anyone who gets bitten by this or any future shady behavior from a software house with such a sterling DRM reputation deserves whatever they get.

What they don't deserve is our pity. Ridicule maybe. I could even be convinced that "Mocking them" is the appropriate response.

Re:I have an idea..

[Fwipp]

It's like the old Texan saying: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, can't get fooled again."

Re:I have an idea..

[grasshoppa]

No, frankly. At this point, they AREN'T doing anything wrong by ripping off their customers.

Customers are entering into the agreement knowing full well what kind of treatment they can expect from Ubisoft, and Ubisoft is providing it.

Re:I have an idea..

[Black Parrot]

It's like the old Texan saying: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, can't get fooled again."

I always heard it as: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

And of course, the word of choice usually wasn't "fool".

(Is this really a regional saying?)

Re:I have an idea..

[networkzombie]

Woosh! You must be from Texas.

Re:I have an idea..

[david_thornley]

Sure about that? Do customers know that Ubisoft may cancel their game keys if Ubisoft doesn't like the distribution channel? I'm not asking if it's buried somewhere in the 79-screen EULA, but if customers are informed at the time of purchase?

Re:I have an idea..

[PhilHibbs]

He's referencing GWB's mangled attempt at the quote.

Re:I have an idea..

[grasshoppa]

Customers may not be able to site specific fears, but you don't have to; a company that's behaved as badly as ubisoft ( or ea for that matter ) should be throwing off all sorts of red flags.

Re:I have an idea..

[HalAtWork]

I already have. They don't seem to be getting the message, but I won't go back to giving them money that's for sure. Easy since they just produce cookie cutter games.

Re:I have an idea..

[Fwipp]

She, but yes, thank you.

Re:I have an idea..

[david_thornley]

Ah the "they're assholes so we can't complain about anything they do" defense. How about "here's another asshole thing they did, they should get what's coming to them?"

Re:I don't see the problem

[Mashiki]

Better let Green Man Gaming and Gamersgate know, they regularly have VIP sales where you can get titles 25-55% off, oh those are both "legit" first-sale shops. So are places like Nuuvem.

This is like

[future assassin]

me in BC buying a car from a guy who bought/brought it in from Alberta and sold it through his car dealership in BC. Then Ford comes in and repossesses my car because I didn't get it through a dealer in BC and because the prices are lower in Alberta so it was unfair to the dealer in BC since it wasn't sold through an authorized dealer.

Re:This is like

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever tried to buy a new car in the US as a resident of Canada?

Yeah. Ubisoft learned from the car industry, they're just a bit better at it.

Re:This is like

[WiPEOUT]

me in BC buying a car from a guy who bought/brought it in from Alberta and sold it through his car dealership in BC. Then Ford comes in and torches my car because I didn't get it through a dealer in BC and because the prices are lower in Alberta so it was unfair to the dealer in BC since it wasn't sold through an authorized dealer, leaving the burnt-out wreck in my driveway.

FTFY.

Re:This is like

[sociocapitalist]

me in BC buying a car from a guy who bought/brought it in from Alberta and sold it through his car dealership in BC. Then Ford comes in and repossesses my car because I didn't get it through a dealer in BC and because the prices are lower in Alberta so it was unfair to the dealer in BC since it wasn't sold through an authorized dealer.

Don't think they wouldn't if they could and if they see your post they'll probably try and get some legislation in place to make it possible.

Re:This is like

[future assassin]

I read up all the cool RIV stuff up on Ebay motors about some the shit that's been going on for years.

CC chargeback and if they ban you fully paid games

[Joe_Dragon]

CC chargeback and if they ban you fully paid games as change back for them as well.

pirate the games and you get no DRM as well

[Joe_Dragon]

pirate the games and you get no DRM as well

Re:pirate the games and you get no DRM as well

[kuzb]

Except then you have to deal with the fact that every other keygen and crack contains malware and keyloggers.

Re:pirate the games and you get no DRM as well

[AK Marc]

Last Ubisoft game I bought was Silent Hunter III. The next had DRM, so I passed, even though I liked SH3.

Re:pirate the games and you get no DRM as well

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! That is the kind of propaganda that the MAFIAA would like people to believe. The truth is, most cracks and keygens are perfectly safe.

I've been doing this shit since the early days of Fairlight and Razor 1911, even running a TDT/TRSi/SWaT distro BBS for a number of years, and have never had a system get infected.

Re:pirate the games and you get no DRM as well

[thegarbz]

I haven't had malware or keyloggers as a result of a crack or keygen in about 6 years. Believe it or not even in the dirty piracy industry there are reputations to uphold. People who provide torrents etc love to put their name on it and will rather aggressively fight those who use their name incorrectly, especially if they are bundling malware with their otherwise clean installers.

There have also been plenty of cases of pirates calling each other out on their shit. Again its a reputation game.

In generally any savvy pirate would not need to worry about malware any more than they would downloading anything else online. There certainly has been more attempts to push malware down my throat by legit companies than pirates in the past few years. (No Adobe I'm not installing anything from McAfee, no Oracle the AskToolbar can go die in a fire).

Re:pirate the games and you get no DRM as well

[kenshin33]

virtualbox is free!

Re:pirate the games and you get no DRM as well

[StillAnonymous]

Didn't SH3 have starforce? That was a pretty invasive copy protection despite it not having an online component.

Re:pirate the games and you get no DRM as well

[AK Marc]

I tried to check, but I didn't find any reference to DRM on the wiki page, despite it being well detailed for SH4. I remember having bought it, but ending up pirating it, but I may not have known why at the time (nor cared).

That and on Steam, it doesn't have Starforce anymore. Though it seems Steam does sell some copy protected Ubisoft games.

Everyone back up a step...

[Notabadguy]

FTFA -

Ubisoft claims (for what it's worth) that the only digital keys that they revoked were those purchased fraudulently with stolen credit cards.

No one has a right to keep stolen property. If you buy a watch in a pawn shop, and the police come for it because it's stolen, you forfeit the watch. Don't get me wrong - I absolutely detest Ubisoft, ever since XIII, and will never buy another product of theirs...I hope their corporate building burns down, they lose their IP to someone, and the name Ubisoft becomes a curseword...

But at the same time, clamoring that the stolen goods you purchased on the black market were taken away from you doesn't garner sympathy.

Re:Everyone back up a step...

[UnknownSoldier]

> they lose their IP to someone, and the name Ubisoft becomes a curseword...

You mean Ubisucks already isn't? :-)

/me ducks

Re:Everyone back up a step...

[vomitology]

...But to follow along applying your example to this situation, the police don't reclaim the watch; people from Rolex come knocking on your door. Who would agree to that?

Re:Everyone back up a step...

[kuzb]

...and yet that doesn't hurt their sales.

You're placing way to much emphasis on what credibility you think they have, and what your opinion is worth.

Re:Everyone back up a step...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have read the first link:

1. a Belgian expat living in Poland buys his game from another country because all the ones sold in Poland are only in Polish language. He wanted the game in French or English language.
2. Ubisoft says "Fuck him, he's a dodgy motherfucker buying games from where we're making less profit. Off with his key!"

Re:Everyone back up a step...

[IamTheRealMike]

That's not what the second link says is happening though.

My reading of the second article is that there is the following problem. Website G2A.com allows private re-sale of game keys, whether that's to undercut the retail prices or avoid region locking or whatever is irrelevant. Carders are constantly on the lookout for ways to cash out stolen credit card numbers. Because fraudulent card purchases can be rolled back and because you have to go through ID verification to accept cards, spending them at their own shops doesn't work - craftier schemes are needed.

So what they do is go online and buy game activation keys in bulk with stolen cards. They know it will take time for the legit owners of the cards to notice and charge back the purchase. Then they go to G2A.com and sell the keys at cut-down prices to people who know they are obtaining keys from a dodgy backstreet source, either they sell for hard-to-reverse payment methods like Western Union or they just bet that nobody wants to file a complaint with PayPal saying they got ripped off trying to buy a $60 game for $5 on a forum known for piracy and unauthorised distribution.

Then what happens? Well, the game reseller gets delivered a list of card chargebacks by their banks and are told they have a limited amount of time to get the chargeback problem under control. Otherwise they will get cut off and not be able to accept credit card payments any more. The only available route to Ubisoft or whoever at this point is to revoke the stolen keys to try and kill the demand for the carded keys.

If that reading is correct then Ubisoft aren't to blame here. They can't just let this trade continue or it threatens their ability to accept legitimate card payments.

Re:Everyone back up a step...

[david_thornley]

The second link says that Ubisoft thinks these licenses were gotten fraudulently. It doesn't seem to define what "fraudulently" is, or what evidence they have. It suggests that it might be credit card fraud, but provides neither certainty nor evidence.

Does Ubisoft sell large numbers of activation keys to random people with credit card numbers? If so, they need to tighten up their practices; precautions sufficient against buying individual games aren't sufficient when dealing with big bucks. If not, Ubisoft's ability to accept legitimate card payments is not threatened in the least. Did some reseller take insufficient precautions? Why is that Ubisoft's problem?

My guess is that they're cracking down on gray marketers.

Oh like that will happen

[ArchieBunker]

That point is brought up every time EA fucks its customers over. I don't see them hurting for business.

Re:Oh like that will happen

[tepples]

My point is that if you don't buy any Ubisoft products, then there's no way for you to get F'd by Ubisoft's policy. It's not like Ubisoft is a platform gatekeeper or anything.

Re:Oh like that will happen

[Gr8Apes]

I agree, I don't buy EA or Ubisoft. Especially nothing Sony. If it's got DRM, it's not going to run on my system (this is not merely an idealistic stance, but a realistic one - it literally most likely won't run on my system or, if it does, it will screw something else up)

Re:I don't see the problem

[Fwipp]

What's up with the scare quotes around "legit" ?

Re:CC chargeback and if they ban you fully paid ga

[buckfeta2014]

Most CC operators won't let you issue that many chargebacks. If they do, they're likely to report you to the police for fraud.

Re:Why you shouldnt buy anything with revocable DR

[Crashmarik]

I ee what you are saying, but how much due diligence is needed when buying a game ? I am sure most people don't want to entrust their credit card information to what they feel are less than reputable sites. In this case, I see nothing about criminal charges against the sellers. Just a company that thinks(rightly or wrongly) it has the right to take action against people who paid for their product.

From where I sit this is just another erosion of the traditional rights people enjoy when they purchase goods.

"WE would never do that . . ."

[hduff]

"WE would never do that . . ." -- Amazon.

Re:Why you shouldnt buy anything with revocable DR

[Crashmarik]

Need to define terms a bit or we will wind up talking past each other. There's plenty of free to play online games where you don't have to make a purchase.

Ubisoft has done this sort of stuff before

[Orion Blastar]

I bought some Ubisoft games at Big Lots on clearance for $5 in CD/DVD form.

One of the games had a discount code for half off the Ubisoft web store. I bought a few titles and applied the discount code to get half off my order. I entered my debit card and paid and waited for the software to ship. Two weeks later my order was canceled, out of stock on every item I ordered. My money was refunded. I tried the discount code again but now it doesn't work.

The games I bought for $5 at Big Lots, the keys were no longer valid.

Re:Ubisoft has done this sort of stuff before

[Joe_Dragon]

take it back to big lots and if they don't CC chargeback or small calms court.

Re:Ubisoft has done this sort of stuff before

[Anonymous Coward]

> I entered my debit card

Are you nuts? You should never use debit with a questionable merchant. Always credit (so you can chargeback if necessary)

Re:Ubisoft has done this sort of stuff before

[CraigCruden]

Not to mention the small claims court you have to file with may be a long distance away -- in another jurisdiction.

Re:Ubisoft has done this sort of stuff before

[rdnetto]

> I entered my debit card

Are you nuts? You should never use debit with a questionable merchant. Always credit (so you can chargeback if necessary)

Depends on your card processor. I know that here in Australia, the Visa debit cards have all of the same protections as their credit cards.

Re:Why you shouldnt buy anything with revocable DR

[pla]

Or maybe it would be an idea to not buy from the cheapest seller

What a great moral to the story! "Quit price-shopping, assholes - Pay full retail, or we... will... fuck you!"

Glad to see people feel just peach about that.

Authorized resellers

[Xian97]

One problem is that how does the consumer know who are authorized resellers? Ubisoft doesn't have a list that I can find, so how do you know if a site is legitimate or not? It's hard to go by the old adage "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is" anymore, with so many sites having sales at cut rate prices on digital goods. I picked up a few "too good to be true" bargains last month during the Steam sales.

Re:Authorized resellers

[thegarbz]

I'm in China at the moment. I'm buying cloths for $10. We just spent $40 on a dinner. We fed 4 people and have leftovers for 3 tomorrow. The cab ride home was about 5km and cost $3.

A lot of that sounds too good to be true, but this is the cost of living here. The people have little money and goods are priced accordingly. If I go into a store and buy a chinese version of an ubisoft game legitimately do you really think I'm paying American prices?

Or another example since I'm from Australia, we get screwed with all digital goods prices to the point where the government initiated a royal commission and summoned executives from Microsoft, Adobe, etc to front the hearing on why everything is twice as expensive here (no the bits aren't upside down and it doesn't cost much to put the "u" back into all the words where you omit it.)

For me if I see a digital copy at half the price I definitely do not think it's "too good to be true". I just think it's the normal price someone else pays for it.

Re:Authorized resellers

[OverlordQ]

If they regularly advertise you have to activate via a VPN, it's a pretty good bet they're not a legit reseller.

If the cost of the product is always vastly cheaper than anywhere else, it's a pretty good bet they're not a legit reseller.

Re:Authorized resellers

[brobins8]

We're assuming they wouldn't do this to someone they sold boxes or keys to directly if they dared to sell for even a dollar less than MSRP. "Going out of business and unloading inventory? You're making our product look like shit doing that! All keys sold to you in the last 6 months invalidated!" "Clearance sale??? Keys go POOF!"

Not a new practice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam has been revoking "out-of-region" keys for some time now. I bought a Dead Island key (unfortunately. Man, that game is awful) off of eBay for 6 bucks not too long after it came out. Turns out the key was for eastern europe market. I activated it just fine in the states, played it a few times, and let it sit there. A few weeks/months later upon logging into Steam I got a warning popup regarding such sort of keys, and the game removed from my list. Not that I miss it much.

I don't condone what they are doing, as the consumer loses in the end and that seems like a horrible practice for any business.

and you call this a problem?

[retchdog]

Nonsense, this is just market efficiency. The real threat to gaming is the possibility of some woman blowing a guy to get a few $K in sales of a lousy game. Here, Ubisoft, take my money!

viva9988

[AbetCenterzone]

Ubisoft claims (for what it's worth) that the only digital keys that they revoked were those purchased fraudulently with stolen credit cards. https://www.viva168.com/

Re:viva9988

[mark-t]

It would make more sense to me if Ubisoft distributed a list of deactivated keys. Any genuinely legitimate business who has fielded and honored requests for replacement keys could then turn and sue Ubisoft for any moneies they were out as a result.

Strikes me as a whole lot more streamlined than trying to form a class action suit involving a completely unknown number of legitimate end users that might have been dinged by this.

It's ok, Ubisoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

I revoked your games from my computers long ago.

precident

[slashmydots]

Autodesk (makers of Autocad) tried to block resale of their products on ebay. They lost horribly in court. The end.

Re:precident

[ledow]

Resale of a legitimately-purchased product is a different matter.

Ubisoft are saying these were "fraudulently obtained", which is very different. Bought with stolen credit card, VAT not paid on them, or some other provable legal issue over their ownership (maybe they were cyber-cafe, or developer licenses and not intended for sale to the general public EVER?), that's very different to "I bought and own a genuine copy of AutoCAD and want to put it on eBay now".

Re:precident

[Lonewolf666]

Maybe more importantly, AutoCAD licenses cost over 6000 Euros (AutoCAD Design Suite Standard 2015). For that much money, it becomes worthwhile to sue in court. While buyers of a 30 Euro game might just take the loss rather than sue.

Re:CC chargeback and if they ban you fully paid ga

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Chargebacks can seriously hurt the affected merchants. For one thing, usually the merchant has to pay a fee on top of refunding the full amount for each individual chargeback, possibly losing that fee even if they subsequently challenge the chargeback and win. For another thing, an unusually high chargeback rate overall can result in much worse terms for future card payment services or even being denied the facility entirely, which for many businesses is effectively a mortal injury.

If it's Ubisoft that was taking the money directly, this hurts them directly. It potentially even follows their officers if they move to other businesses later as well. If it's not Ubisoft taking money directly, then it hurts their resellers, and word quickly gets around that being a reseller for Ubisoft is a lousy gig. Either way, Ubisoft are losing something.

Ain't DRM great?

[frovingslosh]

Game companies have been doing lots to negate the right of first sale for quite a while. But this is different. They created a product then didn't like how some sellers were taking advantage of arbitraging how they bought it. Rather than try to deal with the retailers legally (if they even had a legal option), they decided to just punish innocent customers who have no good way to know all of the details of the Ubisoft wholesale and retail structure. Good for you Ubisoft, thanks for driving another nail into the damn DRM coffin. Do this enough and maybe the sheep will learn not to buy DRM products. (Yea, I don't really believe that the public is smart enough to learn, but I can hope.)

Re:I don't see the problem

[ezelkow1]

Ive done it, plenty of times. Which is one of the reasons steam shut down gifting games from russia (along with the whole currency drop thing). There were plenty of reputable russians out there, so you didnt have to deal with dodgy key sites, who would sell you the game for the russian price with a small mark up on their end. They are completely legit in the instances where games were not region locked which used to be the vast majority. Its how I got the latest civ game for 60% off for a pre-order. Russian prices are usually vastly lower than the USA pricing, i.e. GTA V is 30$ there, the latest COD was 15$ at one point

the only time its not legit is when you are required to use a vpn in order to activate your game since you are violating the TOS at that point. But to have a region non-locked game gifted to you is no way against the TOS. The reputable sellers wont sell you those games anyway since it impacts their business as well. Since you are getting the game gifted the chances of a bad key also go way down, its already in their inventory and most likely purchased directly from the store

As another reply said, go look at nuuvem, as long as a game isnt region locked to brazil (their country of origin) they have no problems selling you a game, which is usually at a vast discount because there are no issues with it, the key could from from the USA, UK, it doesnt matter, its all from the same pool at that point.

Congrats!

[duke_cheetah2003]

Dear UbiSoft,

You've just entered the same realm as Sony as a completely assbackwards company with no respect for your customers whom I will never do business with again, no matter what.

(not that I had a very high opinion of UbiSoft as it was, but this kind of shenanigan just brought it to the bottom.)

Re:Congrats!

[ledow]

"with no respect for your customers"

Technically, these people aren't their customers. That's kind of the problem.

Re:Congrats!

[thegarbz]

Dear duke_cheetah2003,

Thankyou for your kind feedback, but we are having difficulty understanding what you mean with "You've just entered". I can assure you our business practices have remained unchanged for years.

Kind Regards
Ubisoft support teams.

Swatch

[duke_cheetah2003]

Didn't Swatch try this same ploy with Costco, trying to go after them for buying their junk from one country to resell it else where? And they're losing every court battle over it, too.

Sadly, doubt anyone will try to drag UbiSoft into court over video game key revocations.. but yeah.. what they are doing has set precedent against them having a leg to stand on in a court.

Re:Swatch

[mark-t]

It just seems to me like it would be a whole lot easier for a consumer to return to the place they bought it from and get a replacement key.

Re:CC chargeback and if they ban you fully paid ga

[david_thornley]

For this to work, you needed to buy straight from Ubisoft. You probably bought through somebody else, who will suffer and will be discouraged from reselling Ubisoft games out of their designated market, which is precisely what Ubisoft wants.

Re:UBI screws customers - AGAIN

[mark-t]

Actually, I'd expect that if there really was any sort of apparent legitimacy to the sale, the customer would have to petition the place they bought it from for a replacement.

SAAS is a failure, this proves it

[ihtoit]

When a publisher can revoke a legitimately (or at least, good-faith) purchased key, what hope does the consumer have when his OS goes subscription?

Fuck it. If Gearbox pull this shit with Homeworld I'll just stick with my original boxed copy and forego the new content.

Re:SAAS is a failure, this proves it

[ledow]

I'm sure uPlay will tell you - to be a legitimately purchased key, it has to be bought from them and all the terms they imposed on it followed. If those terms are broken (it's resold or whatever) it's not legitimately purchased.

Good-faith is hard to prove, especially when you're buying a product via a random third-party.

Even outside the digital world, this is the type of thing that would come under handling stolen goods (where only a court proof of good faith - not even having no knowledge of the origin of goods, which is deemed that it should have aroused your suspicion - can get you off the charges). You don't need to have proven to you by the seller that it was stolen for it to be a charge of "fencing". You know what happens in such cases? "Your" property is taken from you and - if possible - returned to the original owner. Because it wasn't yours to take in the first place.

You may have paid £10,000 to a guy for your car but if the court thinks you should have been the teensiest bit suspicious (e.g. if it was a £100,000 Lamborghini, you bought it in some back alley, or the guy never had the right paperwork) they will remove it from you. Your only legal recourse? To locate and sue the guy who sold it to you.

Good-faith is hard to prove. Buying from a third-party key site with no ties to uPlay that sells you uPlay keys for less than uPlay can sell them for... that's suspicious. I doubt a court would bother to hear the case past that point.

Tell me, if you'd bought a Windows key from some store on the Internet, would you consider that the same? You wouldn't be suspicious that it was much less than MS could sell you the same kind of key for (OEM etc.)? Or that it wasn't in the MS format of coming with a little certificate sticker, an MS-hologrammed box, etc.? You'd happily plug it into a PC knowing that MS would have the say in whether to activate it or not? Same thing.

Re:SAAS is a failure, this proves it

[ihtoit]

they're nuking keys bought from them! They're not even trying to validate them as having been sold directly to end users, what they're doing is killing serial batches.

Re:SAAS is a failure, this proves it

[david_thornley]

What does good faith have to do with it? If you come up in possession of stolen property, no matter how legitimate the transaction appeared, you don't own it and have to return it to the rightful owner. The only reason it would come up is if a prosecutor decided to press charges against you, and unless it was a clear-cut case with a lot of volume I'd be surprised if the prosecutor did.

there has to be something more to it.

[gl4ss]

the real question is why is ubi selling keys without boxes and knows the keys? they have their own service for buying the game online if you want to, in which case you don't get a cdkey to transfer that you could sell online to someone.

if you acquired the box, the right to play comes with that box and the key comes inside the box. And I really don't think that third parties buying boxed games and selling the keys online would be asking ubisoft to remove the keys from play if they got a chargeback(they're not ubisoft authorized sellers anyways and ubi would be happy to fuck them over).

there has to be something more to it.

I suspect that they're selling bulk keys to cybercafes etc at discount pricing or something similar and deactivating these keys if they find that they're not used in the region sold to..

another explanation - that they already used iirc months ago with another similar incident, was that large amonts of keys got taken from a hacked ubi server.

No fun

[WaffleMonster]

I don't even bother with commercial PC games anymore. Nobody can make a fun game today without treating users like shit once they purchase. Just isn't worth it.

I've seen this happen to friends with various puzzle games. Vendor either went out of business or sold out to someone else and games stopped working or couldn't be reinstalled after a computer crash because the registration servers no longer resolved.

Predict a coming wave of surprises in the future as people begin belatedly realize the strange wording on the side of the box saying vendors assert the right to abandon the game and deny access anytime they want isn't just an idle threat or legalese to be tuned out.

Re:No fun

[HBI]

Economics is already taking hold. The discount is already built in (ever seen what most games go for on Steam?) and most importantly, the boxes aren't moving off the shelves for most titles. All the MBAs trying to extract every iota of marginal demand by these tactics are instead driving stakes into the heart of their business.

That said, a new generation in school today is learning the same idiocy by rote.

Licensing

[ledow]

"Fraudulently obtained" could mean that they were keys offered under, say, a cyber-cafe program, or en-masse but with a caveat not to resell, or for developer testing, or just plain stolen, or any number of things.

All of which, sorry, but that's a legitimate reason to revoke if they've then been resold to the public as individual licences.

I have ALWAYS been suspicious of keys from anything other than the original store precisely because of this - you have NO way of knowing if they are genuine or not or whether they could be revoked or not.

And I was always suspicious that a key could be sold cheaper than, say, Steam or Origin or whoever were selling them. That just reeks that it's cheating some rule, even if it's been sold out of region restrictions or whatever - someone, somewhere is losing money and that makes me suspicious why they would allow that to continue.

Sorry, but Ubisoft aren't doing anything "wrong" here, maybe they aren't doing it "right" though (if you know who these keys are, why not put a pop-up on their account next time they login telling them that they don't have a genuine key - but you'll sell them one - maybe at a discount - for X amount of money so that you don't lose on their third-party sales and they get to legitimise their purchase? A bit like MS did with Windows keys a while back?).

Sorry, but the nature of app stores now is that you can't take third-party keys. Hell, I was incredibly suspicious of Humble Bundles but they seem to be genuine and approved and there isn't a lot of money involved on my end if they do get revoked (I'll be annoyed at the inconvenience, but I won't have lost the games as they provide DRM-free downloads too).

When you use an app store, whether that's Steam, or Windows Marketplace or Google Play Store, you have to get the keys from those companies. Ask yourself why would they co-operate with rivals selling their keys at a lower price than in the store, and offer their download and account services to other companies at a loss?

This may be a step backwards in terms of consumer protection, but equally people have been buying cars that only the original manufacturer can service for DECADES. As soon as you fit a non-standard part, the original company just doesn't want to know any more - in terms of warranty, service, etc. I consider this the same problem.

I have over 800 games on Steam. I trust that they are all genuine - lots are via the Steam store itself (most with money earned in-store via selling items from other Steam games!), and the rest are via trusted bundles that do have a relationship with Steam.

Whenever I saw someone fussing about saving a dollar by going through some external game key store that Steam used to obscure the URL to in their forums (always a good sign that they're official!), I wondered when it would catch up with them. I'd much rather have a genuine game for £10 than a game that could be revoked at any time without any legal comeback for £9. If you don't have the difference to spare, you shouldn't be buying games anyway.

Sorry, but this is your own fault. The only possible excuse is if someone's gifted it to you and you had reason to trust them but I'm not sure if uPlay even has that facility. At least on Steam, all that would happen in that case would be a reversal of the transaction that gave you the game (so you get back anything you traded for it, or nothing if you were stupid enough to trade for it outside of Steam).

Still waiting for all those Russian-sold games to catch up with the people on Steam who bought them cheap, or the games from outside Steam places that people tried to legitimise by using them despite the fact that Steam never say they have a relationship with those companies at all.

everybody getting lost in technical details

[ruir]

And not seeing the obvious. This is a move to close down the 2nd hand market. It is so obvious, a 5 year old could get it. And only gots to show that more than ever, you are not buying programs anymore, but just licenses to run them. On a side note, nobody is forcing you to buy from Ubisoft. If you are not fond of firms with underhanded tactics, do not buy from hem. It is a pity a firm with such a long reputation gets this reputation.

Re:everybody getting lost in technical details

[drinkypoo]

And not seeing the obvious. This is a move to close down the 2nd hand market.

No, no it isn't. Just having non-transferable activation codes was that. This is a stupid and ham-handed attempt both to fight actual crimes and to dissuade people from seeking bargains.

It is so obvious, a 5 year old could get it.

Next time, consult a five year old.

Re:Why you shouldnt buy anything with revocable DR

[Crashmarik]

They weren't dud keys. They were good keys, that UBISOFT revoked. It would be like GM using OnStar to disable your car because they found out you bought it cheaper in South America.

Re:Why you shouldnt buy anything with revocable DR

[IamTheRealMike]

No, if you read the article they clearly state the keys were fraudulently obtained. If you obtain keys via fraud, they are almost by definition not "good keys".

Re:Why you shouldnt buy anything with revocable DR

[Crashmarik]

The suggestion here is that Ubisoft is targeting keys bought with fraudulent credit cards. Sites such as G2A also act as a platform for private sellers to shift video game activation keys. It's understood that those buying these keys do so at their own risk, although many of the third-party websites promise to refund customers who find their keys do not work.

As I said earlier they haven't gone after the sites selling the keys, while the sites offer refunds to the purchasers. It seems the sites are more on the up and up than UBISOFT.

What's good for the goose is...

[Red_Chaos1]

...apparently only good for the goose.

"who often undercut official stores by purchasing cheaper boxed retail copies of games and selling their key-codes online,"

Simple solution here Ubi: stop charging different prices for the same fucking game. It's a real novel concept. Nevermind that part of Capitalism is the purchaser doing what they can to obtain things at the lowest price possible. But hey, it's only good when it's more money in *your* pocket, right?

first-sale doctrine

[SkunkPussy]

I hope Ubisoft are going to contact each of those players and give them a refund directly. Ubisoft's beef is with the seller not with the player.

Valve did it in 2007

[Schnapple]

Valve did this same thing in 2007 with keys to The Orange Box bought from Thailand, which were considerably cheaper. They were very up front about it, they showed the Thai box packaging which clearly stated in English that this was not to be used outside of Thailand, etc.

There was a bit of blowback, and some hemming and hawing like we're seeing here, but ultimately it wasn't a big deal. Whether or not you agree with it, most people knew they were basically cheating by buying a cheap key from a shady foreign website, and they got busted for it (although they weren't out much money because, you know, cheap)

Honestly, when you're buying software you have to agree to the terms or else you don't buy it and you don't get to have it. Yes, if you think this is a dick move from Ubisoft then you're perfectly within your rights to avoid buying their products anymore. But don't think that they're the only ones who do this. Or have the right/ability to do this. And don't think this gives you some sort of right to pirate their games. Or that they had better give you what you want or else you'll pirate their games. You're wrong.

Re:Valve did it in 2007

[Schnapple]

Another fool blathering on about "rights".

Says the coward.

Look, I don't give a fuck what you, some sleazy corporate lawyer, or some crooked, bought-off government thinks my "rights" should be, or what rights they think should be privileges.

So... no laws for you then, I guess?

I'll do what I see as right, and that's that.

And the rest of us should just hope you're some upstanding citizen, I suppose?

If some shitbag corp exec makes a decision that legally but unethically screws me, I'll look for a quick way to screw them right back.

Ah, vigilante I see. You're a regular digital Robin Hood.

This system is broken, and going through what's considered proper channels is extremely time-consuming, expensive, and rigged against you.

Are we still talking about region lockouts? Because it sounds like you're trying to take on City Hall or something.

This means you have to take things into your own hands if you want even a minute amount of justice.

Justice? Look just don't buy a CD key from a shady site and you'll be fine.

Seriously, you're acting like some white knight when really you're some jerkoff on Slashdot who wanted Far Cry 4 for $3 or something.

But let me guess, when that shady site then uses your credit card to buy CD keys in bulk from Origin for resale to other suckers you'll want that "system" to protect you and fix things, right?

You're pathetic.

I don't purchase UbiSoft products anymore

[u-235-sentinel]

Been many years since I've purchased a UbiSoft product. Too many headaches with them loading up software that protects their product and trashes my computer. Even if this isn't a current practice, I've learned my lesson and no longer purchase their products as a result. Hearing this story I'm not surprised there are more problems with the company practices. It only reinforces my past experience with the company. And I certainly will not be customer anytime in the future.

UbiSoft has major cleaning up to perform. I wish them well....

Re:CC chargeback and if they ban you fully paid ga

[david_thornley]

Except that it penalizes the gray market people, and only the gray market people. It doesn't hurt Ubisoft; if they sold copies of the game directly, it was at a price they approved of.

Caveat emptor

[fox171171]

Ubisoft - Buyer beware.

Re:I don't see the problem

[Mashiki]

Give an example where GMG or GG

Okay, Shadows of Mordor was 50% off, so was the season pass. You're welcome.