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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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 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: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.

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

[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).

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...

[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...

[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: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: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.

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.

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: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: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: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.)

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!

[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.

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

[Daniel Hoffmann]

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

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: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.