EU cutizens can sign European Citizens' Initiative that aims to prevent publishers using killswitches to permanently disable games. If it gets 1M signatures, it will be discussed in European Comission.
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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If they don’t sell the game but a long term rental license, then they should not say “we’ve sold 1234557890 copies of ”.
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Things like this make it really easy for me to not buy anything from Ubisoft.
You're right, Ubisoft. I CAN'T complain about not owning the game. I never bought it. You know.....because it's an Ubisoft game!
If buying isn't owning, surely that means pirating isn't stealing.
Some call it piracy when you download games, movies, music, software or books. I call it an online public library. In 2003 I used to get video games from the public library, install them on my PC and play them. You had to have the disk in your CD drive to play the game so when the game was due back at the library you could return or renew it. If game makers don't provide hard copies then downloading is no different than using the library.
I think there is an implication that if you buy a game which is online by nature (e.g. an MMO) that the servers can and will shut down eventually. My cupboard is filled with defunct MMOs. And people do not "own" any commercial software per se, they run it under licence.
So I don't see that Ubisoft has any legal obligation here. But as a good will gesture they really should put the server code in escrow, or open source chunks of it so that games can continue to enjoy life after the company itself has no economic incentive to continue running it.
They’re right but it would be great if companies had to allow self hosting for products they make money from
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What I love about being a broke bitch retro gamer is that I own my games. I have a Tetris cartridge that is older than I am and still works. The batteries on some of my GB and GBA carts have died, but that’s something I can fix. No one can send a stealth update to my Sega Genesis that forces me to create on an account to play or even bricks it somehow. There’s no room for human shit behavior, just a war against the realities of mechanical decay. (And it’s easy to rip ROMs in case of the inevitable.)
Older generations of gaming are well preserved. I don’t think the past ten years or the future will be. “Games as a service” is too big a draw - the goal is to turn everything into a subscription model because why make money once when you can make it forever?
I think I didn’t buy or play anything Ubisoft since Far Cry 4? And even that was more of an accident.
So from my perspective Ubisoft is that one flaccid one night stand who is still screeching about stuff while I moved on years ago.
Edit: I just checked. I didn’t even buy Far Cry 4. Oh whoops.
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This is why I will always have some nostalgia for physical media. I still got CDs I bought in the 90s (which I've copied onto my hard drives a long, long time ago) and while they need a like coaxing to work at times, they are forever mine and no one can take them from me.
I was very hesitant to go on steam specifically for their 'you don't own shit even if you paid and followed the rules' garbage.
Steam is crazy in how it's still usable and not completely enshittified after existing for so many years. I don't know how they do it
It's called staying away from venture capital. It really is as simple as that. Because Valve has a lucrative business model they have no need or desire to raise capital from outside investors, therefore there is nobody to squeeze them for value at the expense of their customers.
If you watch Cory Doctorow's talk where he coined the word "enshittification" he explains how the process works, and it starts with outside investment. Enshittification is just a catchy term for value extraction, from the perspective of the customer.
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Give it another 5 years and Ubisoft will be dead, what was the last Ubisoft game without controversy/bad gameplay? I gotta go back 10 years or so
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Take them to small claims for theft. I'll bet they don't show up. Then they won't pay you, so you get a court order and sheriff to recoup your money in assets. Take anything you want and put it on eBay. Collect your money.
Ubisoft can't be mad at me for not burying any of their games because they don't make any games.
Tell you what customers absolutely can do: decide to stop doing business with you.
Ubisoft doesn’t have to support the game forever.
They can either open up hosting to players or give refunds but they can’t have their cake and eat it too.
I actually enjoyed the first two Crew games and probably would have checked out Motorfest by now if they didn't remove the first game from my library. But now, why should I ever buy another Ubisoft game when I don't know how long they'll bless me with the ability to play the games I've paid for? They even included expiration dates for their game keys and they're acting like those dates were completely meaningless. So, even if they try to add an end of life date for future purchases, how would I know they're not lying like they did with these original keys?
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The use of the words 'buy', "own" or 'purchase' in connection with DRM rental should be an international felony, and grounds for immediate break-up of businesses that use them.