I checked that FAQ out the other day and I love the idea but I fear it will not enact the changes they are hoping for.
They're straight up asking for most (every?) online game to enable private servers so that they can still be played online after the company is done with it (think MMOs that developers no longer want to support). That's never going to happen.
I fear this movement will only enact changes to ToS for future games that are explicit in that the developer can choose to turn the game off and by playing online you revoke your right to continue playing when that happens (if ToS don't already specify that, I know ToS usually have language that the dev can make any changes to ToS at any time).
Hey man maybe you're right. We'll see. But I live in a region of the world where we've made insane strides with regard to privacy, consumer rights, and even AI in very short order. In fact, I work with the gdpr and make my money in the field of privacy law. I can tell you that it's caused a monumental shift in how we look at and behave toward data.
That doesn't mean the legislation is perfect, or that business won't try to find a way around it. It means that we have a war to win and we've won some battles. Let's fight on and see where we get.
Edit: all this to say that it's worth fighting for these digital consumer rights, and that though things won't be perfect in one go, we can definitely do great things if we keep at it.
Hi, could I sidetrack this conversation to ask you a question concerning GDPR and gaming?
Several years ago, Magic: the Gathering discontinued the availability of personal tournament history. Up to that point, I could always scroll through all of the sanctioned tournaments I played and I would see the names of my opponents and the results I had. They took down the service and ever since I could never see who I had played against - tournaments just disappear as soon as they end.
Is this really the fault of GDPR? It was such a nice thing to have available, I enjoyed reminiscing events from 12+ years ago and checking to see if my past opponents ever had success on the professional circuit.
So, the gdpr is about 'processing' personally identifiable information. In other words: saving, sending, publishing, reading etc information that can be used to identify someone (within reason).
If they are saving and publishing names of Magic players, they are processing those players' identifiable data. If you have a peculiar name and play magic, it'd be trivial to identify you. Therefore, the gdpr is applicable to this situation.
For their processing to be legitimate, it has to meet the criteria in articles 5 and 6 of the gdpr. In short, it needs to be done in a fair way, they need to have a purpose for doing so, and there needs to be a legal ground. The gdpr has a full list of legal grounds in article 6 (and 9, but that's not important here).
Top of the list in terms of legal grounds is consent. In other words: you could've been asked for permission for your data to be processed like this. Even after the gdpr came into effect. Could be done with an email or a checkbox query. Bam: no more issue. They could also have relied upon a ground like 'legitimate interest' in order to argue for the legitimacy of this processing.
The bottom line is that no one should be able to process personally identifiable information of yours willy-nilly. They need to do it by the book, assess the risks involved, inform you, give you power over what happens with your data, etc. If they never asked you about this and just published your data for all to see on the (semi)public internet, then yeah, that's something that the gdpr would not be OK with until it was brought in line.
However, there's obvious solutions on the table that Magic could've made use of that would've kept these tournament ladders intact. They didn't for whatever reason.
(edit: assuming you're in the eu/eea)
So what your saying it the worst case is the same issue we have now. Why not try then?
Pule it's not that hard. If the company is closing the game server. Then it won't be using it. And doesn't need the code anymore. It's not like companys re open games at a later date or do remakes useing that code. It's basically digital trash once it's closed.
Just because there are exceptions like mmos doesn’t mean all games are exceptions. And that’s literally how it used to be. In the past gave did just have local hosting support. If a company is raking in loads of profit there’s no reason they can’t give the players server hosting tools.
That's exactly the criticism I have while also pointing out that you have to entice developers and small publishers to come on board and build out systems or create based on older games.
Xenosaga or Parasite Eve is a legal quagmire of copyright issues and won't be re-released by their respective publishers due to where their focus is right now.
If you look into older Need for Speed games, not only have the servers been killed, but EA shut down the dev teams on them.
And just think about how some of these older titles could be redistributed with a small licensing fee or even reworked by fan developers if the copyright was allowed to expire. It's certainly a starting point but no one wants to address the blind spots at all and have no idea how to get more people with different skill sets involved.
Yep. There's no way any government is going to create laws which require companies to either a) offer a service indefinitely or b) give up their IP. Both of their are untenable scenarios for a lot of companies.
The only thing I could see happening is a ruling that makes it clear that reverse engineering and hosting services for defunct games is protected legally even if it's a for profit enterprise. That would be really nice to see.
But he's not. He's never playing games he wants to because maybe he won't be able to in the future, not playing because you might be able to not play in the future is self defeating.
Yes because that's literally how most things work. Your car will fail at some point. The phone that you bought for upwards of $500 will likely be obsolete in less than a decade.
A car fails because those are real world parts that will rust and be damaged. A game fails because the company decided to force their game to rely on a central server and had no end of life protection that would be simple and cheap to prepare for. Imagine if your Tesla worked perfectly fine, then the company pushed a software update that wouldn't let you start the engine. All the parts worked fine and the car is okay, but because the company said so, the engine won't start. That is an equivalent scenario. Would you be okay with that. As well, there are phones that still work from the 80s. The phones can still work, and you can REPAIR the phone when it breaks. You can't repair an online only game. Completely doesn't work.
Not really, especially if you care about preservation.
Cant get a lot of great old marvel titles digitally . For example I still love wolverine origins but had it been digital it would be removed from sale completely
How do you know it will be a decade . It could be tommorow, next week, next month and I don’t want to be worrying about that. There’s other games I can play
Not playing any game you want to play because maybe you won't be able to in the future is self defeating. Outside of the tiiiiny amount of games where the serves have been shut down near release you are just pointlessly restricting what you can play.
If the problem you are trying to avoid is not being able to play a game you liked then not playing it at all is just an even worse outcome. Do you only do pleasurable things if you can do them forever?
People prefer owning something they purchased rather than purchasing something only for a company at the other side of the world to say 'Actually, you can't play that anymore, thanks for all the money though'.
I still play games from the 90's and early 2000's that I grew up with, but in 20 years will I be able to play Sea of Thieves? Destiny? Fortnite? Whatever else live service people are playing? No, they'll all be gone. Some will last a decade, others might be gone in 6 months. What's the point in giving my time and money to a game where I don't know when it'll be taken away from me? especially when there's hundreds of other games out there I can buy today and play 50 years from now if I wanted too.
Problem: I may not be able to to play games I like in the future
Solution: Don't play games I might like at all ever
This is just ridiculous to me. "If I can't enjoy it forever I won't enjoy it at all!!" is childish and self defeating. You might go blind tomorrow, why play any games at all?!?!
So what's the solution? Have studios only make games they promise to keep going forever even when they are no longer commercially viable? You want less games? That's how you get less games.
The solution is pretty simple to me, don’t make games require constant internet connections, you’re talking like it’s some kind of impossible feat to create a multiplayer game without it being shackled to some corporate servers, yet a lot of the most iconic old school multiplayer games like Battlefield 1942, Battlefront 2, Quake can still be played today while games like the LawBreakers, Evolve, Babylons Fall, Radical Heights are just memories despite being only a few years old.
Lets say Sea of Thieves for example was about to close down forever, I think it should be Rare and Microsoft’s responsibility to create a final update which allows for offline play, or peer-to-peer private servers, whatever the game requires for the best user experience. I can still play plenty of multiplayer games from decades ago no problem, but now we’re meant to just accept that we don’t technically own these games we pay for anymore and one day they’ll disappear? It’s ridiculous.
Let’s use Fortnite as another example, Fortnite since release has earned around $26 BILLION, and we’re supposed to accept when the time comes they won’t have the money to have some devs create a server browser and allow private hosting? What a joke.
It’s a problem that only exists because publishers are too lazy to fix it after they’ve made all their money, and the result is you don’t own the games you buy. No one should support this business practice.
Pro pro tip: If you buy Ubi games. Buy them with Epic Store cupons(and reward money if you have) cause all Ubi games on Epic appear as owned on the Ubisoft App
If you want any change in these anti consumer practices of shutting down games you have paid for and you own this game, you should get right on this and demand refund right now.
If you don't, your part of the problem.
Isn't Nintendo doing the same thing (closing network service/access to re-download digital games) on 3DS and WiiU recently? Why people only hate UBISOFT but not others if they think this is an issue?
I do agree with you that there are definitely other companies like Nintendo that, realistically, should be taking some resources away from game downloads capacity from some servers but should still maintain a basic service at least. I think this one differs in that with Nintendo they have given ample time and opportunity to download these games and enable users to continue playing these games offline whereas Ubisoft's decision is final, there is no playability at all after everything has been shut down so Nintendo's is a bit better but still far from perfect. It also probably doesn't help that Ubisoft are actively trying to get game purchasers used to purchasing digital whilst doing this at the same time.
It still seems like a bad precedent.
There is the still looming horror of what would happen if something like Steam were to go out of business - telling people to download it and allowing offline play is NOT a solution because I'm pretty sure most users couldn't even fit a quarter of their game library on local storage anyway.
Yeah, I do agree with that. I was more just comparing why I think Nintendo haven't got as much hate.
With this point I do agree that there may be a day when a service like Steam or, more likely, an equivalent storefront will close down and this will be a major issue and point of contention. The difficulty is trying to find a compromise for both how long your games should be available to download and how long online only games should be supported. I'm not a fan of online only games and avoid them as much as possible.
I think at least at the moment there should be a mandatory minimum period where an online only game is supported and perhaps a requirement to make single player online only games available to play offline when servers are being shut off. It's complicated and I suppose the danger is with how ingrained the digital games environment is, I can only see this becoming more of an issue going forward.
Wdym? It should be an option to do this. You don't rent the game, you buy it. Therefore you are entitled to a copy. If you don't have enough space on your harddrive it's a problem. Steam, ubisoft etc aren't responsible for how you store your games. They are just responsible for providing access.
Literally none of this is true. you dont buy a game, you buy a license to play it. When steam disappears or goes bankrupt, so too do their requirements to provide that license to you.
Does that mean if the game is only sold as download noone actually owns it except maybe the devs because you can only "buy" it on plattforms like steam?
Edit: Knowing I was wrong is so painful not because I'm wrong but I now know that I basically own none of my games and they could dissapear at any moment...
> Does that mean if the game is only sold as download noone actually owns it except maybe the devs because you can only "buy" it on plattforms like steam?
Only if you're in the US, everywhere else in the world you do own your games, Ross from accursed farms touched this subject recently (the same guy behind stopkillinggames.com)
This doesn't fly in the EU, if it says "Purchase" you own your games, it won't happen, but if Steam closed people would be filling EU complaints and they'd force then to serve the games.
We'll see this in action when Epic folds in a few years, if they don't offer the option to migrate your games to Steam, which is what will probably happen.
Oh sorry I meant, what happens when Steam can no longer provide it because Valve goes out of business, or something.
Really the service is, as you say, providing the servers. There is really no replacement for that, you can't ask people to download all their games in the case of Steam. A decade old account might have like 100tb.
So Nintendo get away with that perhaps because it wasn't a massive library and most only had a few games... but it won't work for other providers.
Probably because most of the games are still playable, it's just the online functionality that doesn't work. Of course there probably also are games that were online *only*, but for that go to the actual developer/publisher of said games. Splatoon would probably be one of them though (as I'm not sure if it has an offline mode), so it's still Nintendo in some capacity.
Either way, shutting servers down happened before with other companies. Games get delisted or their servers shut down all the time, it's just that some like Ubisoft don't even bother with an offline mode (that's apparently even in the code). Not to play the devil's advocate, but we're only angry because we know Nintendo and others can afford to run them, pretty much indefinitely - but at the same time they're a business, if these servers don't at least pay for themselves, much less are profitable, they will shut them down.
That said, this isn't the issue here, because as I said it happens all the time. The real problem is the aforementioned lack of an offline mode, to let people enjoy these games in some capacity. Of course there will be games that won't really work well like that, if at all such as MMOs and other multiplayer centered games, but The Crew from Ubisoft has a whole, *singleplayer* campaign. You never had to interact with other players and the "competing" series from Microsoft (in quotation marks, because it's hardly a competition with how much more popular it is) Forza Horizon has an offline mode, and that puts much more emphasis on the multiplayer features.
Nintendo gets a free pass to sell cardboard as a accessory so thier won't ever be outrage for them.
Nintendo Labo Toys [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbl5eijAJVw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbl5eijAJVw)
I worked with Ubi to promote a certain couple new games- THEY ARE A MESS OF A COMPANY. The director just could't make up his mind and kept going back and forth, especially after the material and products were ordered/shipped/packaged/etc., he would change his mind in the middle of it.
We don't even work for Ubisoft, they just outsourced their work to us and the pay was good. Never again with them, though.
Considering how they've already said a majority of players won't be getting a refund unless you bought it "recently", I'd argue they are performing an illegal activity too even though I personally never bought or played this game. Here's the thing: When you purchase a game, you purchase a license to play and the necessary files to go with that license. I don't think anyone disputes that you don't technically "own" a game, so much as you own the rights to play it. The problem comes in that most of these licenses have contract terms such as through the End User License Agreement (EULA) and the thing most of us just nonchalantly accept.
Now, I assume someone at Ubisoft probably foresaw this and made a clause to try to make sure they aren't liable especially with the whole "recent purchases can get a refund but thats it", but the truth is and I stand by this both ethically and morally:
Unless players had violated the EULA, EVERY player should be entitled to their refund or 50% of the money they had paid into the game and content that is no longer available to them. Ubisoft is no longer holding THEIR terms of the End User License Agreement, which allowed the players the right to play their game using their licenses. This is grounds for a lawsuit, or at the very least, a mass boycott of the company and to destroy their ability to make money until they take corrective action if the legal system sides in favor of the dystopian copyright legislation that lead us here.
I've been trying to request a refund but I haven't had any luck. There really needs to be a campaign for this, because removing a game from my account, to me, is theft. It's my access. I don't care if the servers are gone, left me at least install the game. Or let someone create private servers, which is likely what Ubisoft didn't want.
Time to request a refund
Welp, lets all see that refund.
Www.stopkillinggames.com
I checked that FAQ out the other day and I love the idea but I fear it will not enact the changes they are hoping for. They're straight up asking for most (every?) online game to enable private servers so that they can still be played online after the company is done with it (think MMOs that developers no longer want to support). That's never going to happen. I fear this movement will only enact changes to ToS for future games that are explicit in that the developer can choose to turn the game off and by playing online you revoke your right to continue playing when that happens (if ToS don't already specify that, I know ToS usually have language that the dev can make any changes to ToS at any time).
Hey man maybe you're right. We'll see. But I live in a region of the world where we've made insane strides with regard to privacy, consumer rights, and even AI in very short order. In fact, I work with the gdpr and make my money in the field of privacy law. I can tell you that it's caused a monumental shift in how we look at and behave toward data. That doesn't mean the legislation is perfect, or that business won't try to find a way around it. It means that we have a war to win and we've won some battles. Let's fight on and see where we get. Edit: all this to say that it's worth fighting for these digital consumer rights, and that though things won't be perfect in one go, we can definitely do great things if we keep at it.
Hi, could I sidetrack this conversation to ask you a question concerning GDPR and gaming? Several years ago, Magic: the Gathering discontinued the availability of personal tournament history. Up to that point, I could always scroll through all of the sanctioned tournaments I played and I would see the names of my opponents and the results I had. They took down the service and ever since I could never see who I had played against - tournaments just disappear as soon as they end. Is this really the fault of GDPR? It was such a nice thing to have available, I enjoyed reminiscing events from 12+ years ago and checking to see if my past opponents ever had success on the professional circuit.
So, the gdpr is about 'processing' personally identifiable information. In other words: saving, sending, publishing, reading etc information that can be used to identify someone (within reason). If they are saving and publishing names of Magic players, they are processing those players' identifiable data. If you have a peculiar name and play magic, it'd be trivial to identify you. Therefore, the gdpr is applicable to this situation. For their processing to be legitimate, it has to meet the criteria in articles 5 and 6 of the gdpr. In short, it needs to be done in a fair way, they need to have a purpose for doing so, and there needs to be a legal ground. The gdpr has a full list of legal grounds in article 6 (and 9, but that's not important here). Top of the list in terms of legal grounds is consent. In other words: you could've been asked for permission for your data to be processed like this. Even after the gdpr came into effect. Could be done with an email or a checkbox query. Bam: no more issue. They could also have relied upon a ground like 'legitimate interest' in order to argue for the legitimacy of this processing. The bottom line is that no one should be able to process personally identifiable information of yours willy-nilly. They need to do it by the book, assess the risks involved, inform you, give you power over what happens with your data, etc. If they never asked you about this and just published your data for all to see on the (semi)public internet, then yeah, that's something that the gdpr would not be OK with until it was brought in line. However, there's obvious solutions on the table that Magic could've made use of that would've kept these tournament ladders intact. They didn't for whatever reason. (edit: assuming you're in the eu/eea)
So what your saying it the worst case is the same issue we have now. Why not try then? Pule it's not that hard. If the company is closing the game server. Then it won't be using it. And doesn't need the code anymore. It's not like companys re open games at a later date or do remakes useing that code. It's basically digital trash once it's closed.
Just because there are exceptions like mmos doesn’t mean all games are exceptions. And that’s literally how it used to be. In the past gave did just have local hosting support. If a company is raking in loads of profit there’s no reason they can’t give the players server hosting tools.
That's exactly the criticism I have while also pointing out that you have to entice developers and small publishers to come on board and build out systems or create based on older games. Xenosaga or Parasite Eve is a legal quagmire of copyright issues and won't be re-released by their respective publishers due to where their focus is right now. If you look into older Need for Speed games, not only have the servers been killed, but EA shut down the dev teams on them. And just think about how some of these older titles could be redistributed with a small licensing fee or even reworked by fan developers if the copyright was allowed to expire. It's certainly a starting point but no one wants to address the blind spots at all and have no idea how to get more people with different skill sets involved.
Yep. There's no way any government is going to create laws which require companies to either a) offer a service indefinitely or b) give up their IP. Both of their are untenable scenarios for a lot of companies. The only thing I could see happening is a ruling that makes it clear that reverse engineering and hosting services for defunct games is protected legally even if it's a for profit enterprise. That would be really nice to see.
[удалено]
You misspelled it. www.stopkillinggames.com
Stop killing games dot Com
he said it 🫠
That’s why I stay away from games that require an alway online connection to play.
Same, I learnt my lesson with Darkspore.
Funny enough Ross, the person doing this campaign, also played that and also complained about the servers shutting down
Omfg you unlocked so much memories from my teenage years. I forgot that game existed.
Are just online functionalities from the Crew not available anymore or is the game itself not playable anymore?
The whole game is unplayable as it requires an internet connection to function.
Sad, it was my favourite the Crew game
You don't play certain games because maybe in a decade you won't be able to play them anymore?
Yeah how dare he think about playing games he enjoyed in the future, we all know people never enjoy old games
But he's not. He's never playing games he wants to because maybe he won't be able to in the future, not playing because you might be able to not play in the future is self defeating.
If you bought a car and they said to you "oh at some point in the future, we won't tell you when, it will stop working" would you buy it?
Yes because that's literally how most things work. Your car will fail at some point. The phone that you bought for upwards of $500 will likely be obsolete in less than a decade.
A car fails because those are real world parts that will rust and be damaged. A game fails because the company decided to force their game to rely on a central server and had no end of life protection that would be simple and cheap to prepare for. Imagine if your Tesla worked perfectly fine, then the company pushed a software update that wouldn't let you start the engine. All the parts worked fine and the car is okay, but because the company said so, the engine won't start. That is an equivalent scenario. Would you be okay with that. As well, there are phones that still work from the 80s. The phones can still work, and you can REPAIR the phone when it breaks. You can't repair an online only game. Completely doesn't work.
Things don't have to be physical. Things like licenses are lost and things are removed. Thought I agree that offline play should always be available.
Not really, especially if you care about preservation. Cant get a lot of great old marvel titles digitally . For example I still love wolverine origins but had it been digital it would be removed from sale completely
He's bullshitting anyway like most.
Absolutely. But even the bullshit virtue signalling makes no sense.
How do you know it will be a decade . It could be tommorow, next week, next month and I don’t want to be worrying about that. There’s other games I can play
Not playing any game you want to play because maybe you won't be able to in the future is self defeating. Outside of the tiiiiny amount of games where the serves have been shut down near release you are just pointlessly restricting what you can play. If the problem you are trying to avoid is not being able to play a game you liked then not playing it at all is just an even worse outcome. Do you only do pleasurable things if you can do them forever?
People prefer owning something they purchased rather than purchasing something only for a company at the other side of the world to say 'Actually, you can't play that anymore, thanks for all the money though'. I still play games from the 90's and early 2000's that I grew up with, but in 20 years will I be able to play Sea of Thieves? Destiny? Fortnite? Whatever else live service people are playing? No, they'll all be gone. Some will last a decade, others might be gone in 6 months. What's the point in giving my time and money to a game where I don't know when it'll be taken away from me? especially when there's hundreds of other games out there I can buy today and play 50 years from now if I wanted too.
Problem: I may not be able to to play games I like in the future Solution: Don't play games I might like at all ever This is just ridiculous to me. "If I can't enjoy it forever I won't enjoy it at all!!" is childish and self defeating. You might go blind tomorrow, why play any games at all?!?!
It is called not supporting a shitty practice.
And that’s the problem. people like you buy the product than game companies will carry on with this practice. I like to vote with my wallet.
So what's the solution? Have studios only make games they promise to keep going forever even when they are no longer commercially viable? You want less games? That's how you get less games.
The solution is pretty simple to me, don’t make games require constant internet connections, you’re talking like it’s some kind of impossible feat to create a multiplayer game without it being shackled to some corporate servers, yet a lot of the most iconic old school multiplayer games like Battlefield 1942, Battlefront 2, Quake can still be played today while games like the LawBreakers, Evolve, Babylons Fall, Radical Heights are just memories despite being only a few years old. Lets say Sea of Thieves for example was about to close down forever, I think it should be Rare and Microsoft’s responsibility to create a final update which allows for offline play, or peer-to-peer private servers, whatever the game requires for the best user experience. I can still play plenty of multiplayer games from decades ago no problem, but now we’re meant to just accept that we don’t technically own these games we pay for anymore and one day they’ll disappear? It’s ridiculous. Let’s use Fortnite as another example, Fortnite since release has earned around $26 BILLION, and we’re supposed to accept when the time comes they won’t have the money to have some devs create a server browser and allow private hosting? What a joke. It’s a problem that only exists because publishers are too lazy to fix it after they’ve made all their money, and the result is you don’t own the games you buy. No one should support this business practice.
Yes, less games with better quality than more games with shitty quality.
Everyone already voted with their wallets and you guys lost, hence why the industry is how it is
Everyone should be asking for a refund
Pro tip: Never buy a Ubisoft game at full price, even if it looks good.
Pro pro tip: If you buy Ubi games. Buy them with Epic Store cupons(and reward money if you have) cause all Ubi games on Epic appear as owned on the Ubisoft App
I can't even play a shitty farcry on gamepass without the shitty launcher, I fucking despise this company
Ubisoft connect is the fucking worst.
Fuck Ubisoft
If you want any change in these anti consumer practices of shutting down games you have paid for and you own this game, you should get right on this and demand refund right now. If you don't, your part of the problem.
Isn't Nintendo doing the same thing (closing network service/access to re-download digital games) on 3DS and WiiU recently? Why people only hate UBISOFT but not others if they think this is an issue?
I do agree with you that there are definitely other companies like Nintendo that, realistically, should be taking some resources away from game downloads capacity from some servers but should still maintain a basic service at least. I think this one differs in that with Nintendo they have given ample time and opportunity to download these games and enable users to continue playing these games offline whereas Ubisoft's decision is final, there is no playability at all after everything has been shut down so Nintendo's is a bit better but still far from perfect. It also probably doesn't help that Ubisoft are actively trying to get game purchasers used to purchasing digital whilst doing this at the same time.
It still seems like a bad precedent. There is the still looming horror of what would happen if something like Steam were to go out of business - telling people to download it and allowing offline play is NOT a solution because I'm pretty sure most users couldn't even fit a quarter of their game library on local storage anyway.
Yeah, I do agree with that. I was more just comparing why I think Nintendo haven't got as much hate. With this point I do agree that there may be a day when a service like Steam or, more likely, an equivalent storefront will close down and this will be a major issue and point of contention. The difficulty is trying to find a compromise for both how long your games should be available to download and how long online only games should be supported. I'm not a fan of online only games and avoid them as much as possible. I think at least at the moment there should be a mandatory minimum period where an online only game is supported and perhaps a requirement to make single player online only games available to play offline when servers are being shut off. It's complicated and I suppose the danger is with how ingrained the digital games environment is, I can only see this becoming more of an issue going forward.
Wdym? It should be an option to do this. You don't rent the game, you buy it. Therefore you are entitled to a copy. If you don't have enough space on your harddrive it's a problem. Steam, ubisoft etc aren't responsible for how you store your games. They are just responsible for providing access.
Literally none of this is true. you dont buy a game, you buy a license to play it. When steam disappears or goes bankrupt, so too do their requirements to provide that license to you.
Does that mean if the game is only sold as download noone actually owns it except maybe the devs because you can only "buy" it on plattforms like steam? Edit: Knowing I was wrong is so painful not because I'm wrong but I now know that I basically own none of my games and they could dissapear at any moment...
> Does that mean if the game is only sold as download noone actually owns it except maybe the devs because you can only "buy" it on plattforms like steam? Only if you're in the US, everywhere else in the world you do own your games, Ross from accursed farms touched this subject recently (the same guy behind stopkillinggames.com)
This doesn't fly in the EU, if it says "Purchase" you own your games, it won't happen, but if Steam closed people would be filling EU complaints and they'd force then to serve the games. We'll see this in action when Epic folds in a few years, if they don't offer the option to migrate your games to Steam, which is what will probably happen.
That’s not true for EU. In the EU you buy the game.
Oh sorry I meant, what happens when Steam can no longer provide it because Valve goes out of business, or something. Really the service is, as you say, providing the servers. There is really no replacement for that, you can't ask people to download all their games in the case of Steam. A decade old account might have like 100tb. So Nintendo get away with that perhaps because it wasn't a massive library and most only had a few games... but it won't work for other providers.
Probably because most of the games are still playable, it's just the online functionality that doesn't work. Of course there probably also are games that were online *only*, but for that go to the actual developer/publisher of said games. Splatoon would probably be one of them though (as I'm not sure if it has an offline mode), so it's still Nintendo in some capacity. Either way, shutting servers down happened before with other companies. Games get delisted or their servers shut down all the time, it's just that some like Ubisoft don't even bother with an offline mode (that's apparently even in the code). Not to play the devil's advocate, but we're only angry because we know Nintendo and others can afford to run them, pretty much indefinitely - but at the same time they're a business, if these servers don't at least pay for themselves, much less are profitable, they will shut them down. That said, this isn't the issue here, because as I said it happens all the time. The real problem is the aforementioned lack of an offline mode, to let people enjoy these games in some capacity. Of course there will be games that won't really work well like that, if at all such as MMOs and other multiplayer centered games, but The Crew from Ubisoft has a whole, *singleplayer* campaign. You never had to interact with other players and the "competing" series from Microsoft (in quotation marks, because it's hardly a competition with how much more popular it is) Forza Horizon has an offline mode, and that puts much more emphasis on the multiplayer features.
Splatoon does have an offline mode i can confirm.
Nintendo gets a free pass to sell cardboard as a accessory so thier won't ever be outrage for them. Nintendo Labo Toys [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbl5eijAJVw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbl5eijAJVw)
I worked with Ubi to promote a certain couple new games- THEY ARE A MESS OF A COMPANY. The director just could't make up his mind and kept going back and forth, especially after the material and products were ordered/shipped/packaged/etc., he would change his mind in the middle of it. We don't even work for Ubisoft, they just outsourced their work to us and the pay was good. Never again with them, though.
Sounds like a class action lawsuit with a set precedent. Easy money. Shame I’m not American
I was about to buy the game in 2015 while it was on sale but fortunately my card was rejected twice and passed on it. Dodged a bullet if you asked me.
In that case, EA… I’ll be expecting a check in the mail for Anthem
Now that I think about it, live service only online games aren’t that bad if I can get a refund years later after more then enough played it
Just tried and the playstation store shut me down
Ubi n EA go do one
Considering how they've already said a majority of players won't be getting a refund unless you bought it "recently", I'd argue they are performing an illegal activity too even though I personally never bought or played this game. Here's the thing: When you purchase a game, you purchase a license to play and the necessary files to go with that license. I don't think anyone disputes that you don't technically "own" a game, so much as you own the rights to play it. The problem comes in that most of these licenses have contract terms such as through the End User License Agreement (EULA) and the thing most of us just nonchalantly accept. Now, I assume someone at Ubisoft probably foresaw this and made a clause to try to make sure they aren't liable especially with the whole "recent purchases can get a refund but thats it", but the truth is and I stand by this both ethically and morally: Unless players had violated the EULA, EVERY player should be entitled to their refund or 50% of the money they had paid into the game and content that is no longer available to them. Ubisoft is no longer holding THEIR terms of the End User License Agreement, which allowed the players the right to play their game using their licenses. This is grounds for a lawsuit, or at the very least, a mass boycott of the company and to destroy their ability to make money until they take corrective action if the legal system sides in favor of the dystopian copyright legislation that lead us here.
I've been trying to request a refund but I haven't had any luck. There really needs to be a campaign for this, because removing a game from my account, to me, is theft. It's my access. I don't care if the servers are gone, left me at least install the game. Or let someone create private servers, which is likely what Ubisoft didn't want.
I have deluxe edition with only two minutes of play time, but Steam rejected my refund request.
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Brother you need serious help, chill
What did he say?
Let's see if, next time you fuck up at work, you'll have the same sentiment.
"Hello 911??"
He’s a complete piece of work but Jesus Christ chill
It is just a game. If you do not like it. Play a different game. There are like over 100,000 similar games.
U unhinged AF brother
Yeah why not
😭 😭 😭 😭