12 ms·

Ubisoft about to take away games you bought

219 points by snikolaev 4y ago

marcodiego 4y ago
Bookmarking for my list of why DRM is bad.
zakember 4y ago
The company named 2K pulls this every year where they disable the multiplayer and even single-player story-mode of their NBA 2K games that are less than 2 years old (they turned off NBA 2K20 servers in Dec 2021)
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
You don't own your games on steam, uplay, or any other drm filled service. If you want to own your games, get used to either having old games and going to flea markets to find them, or buy from GOG. I've made a deliberate and purposeful shift to buy my games from GOG for this reason. Except for a stupid prank ( https://www.criticalhit.net/gaming/breaking-gog-com-shuts-down-we-investigate/ https://www.criticalhit.net/gaming/breaking-gog-com-shuts-do... ) that - to this day - I am a bit annoyed by, I've greatly appreciated their service.
- public_defender 4y ago
  What's the prank? That article just says gog.com went offline.
  - OrangeMonkey 4y ago
    https://techgage.com/news/gogcom_is_not_shutting_down_after_all/ https://techgage.com/news/gogcom_is_not_shutting_down_after_... It was a marketing prank. Someone, high up in their company, thought it would be HIGH HUMOR to pretend their site went down before users could download their drm free games. They relaunched a completely new redesigned site a few days later, but this was a mistkae. I still haven't forgotten or forgiven about this, but I still buy from them because the alternative is much worst.
    - macintux 4y ago
      Seems like a perfect example of the pitfall described in the John Scalzi blogpost discussed here earlier today. https://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/06/16/the-failure-state-of-clever/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/06/16/the-failure-state-of-... Update: the highlight for anyone who doesn't care to follow a random link: > The failure mode of clever is “asshole.”
  - ozmodiar 4y ago
    Gog pranked people by saying they were going offline and you would lose your games. I guess it was to highlight that they're the only service where you can back up your games and don't need to worry about DRM, but there was a lot of confusion and people didn't find it that funny at the time.
    - OrangeMonkey 4y ago
      > people didn't find it that funny at the time. Or, to this day.
    - tomc1985 4y ago
      Humorists all over the western world are finding that the newest members of their audience don't even speak their language any more. Kind of reminds me of the Funnybot episode of South Park. I for one think the prank that GOG pulled is HILARIOUS
- mccorrinall 4y ago
  You don’t even own your steam account. If you forget your password, but have other ways to proof (7+ years of purchase history of your credit card and paypal, your ID etc) they will still say: „go fuck yourself, buy all games again.“ Happened to me. Awful customer service.
  - sidlls 4y ago
    They have an obligation to provide you with the items/services you purchased. That includes access to them through an account. If you can actually prove the account is yours, you should be able to. Of course, it might be ridiculously expensive (go through the courts)--but that's what these companies are counting on.
    - xuki 4y ago
      You don't even need to go to court, just get a lawyer to write a letter will go way further than any (overworked) customer service rep can help.
    - mccorrinall 4y ago
      After one year of sending tickets back and forth I just asked my credit card issuer to charge back all purchases ever made. Going to court or similar was not an option as a poor student :/
  - djbusby 4y ago
    Arbitration clause? Or small-claims court?
    - mokus 4y ago
      Perhaps if they try to force you to arbitration you can push back and demand proof that you agreed to their terms, which is conveniently achieved by creating an account.
      - fdupress 4y ago
- reset-password 4y ago
  You don't own them, but they sure do everything possible to obfuscate that fact. Regulation will likely be needed as the sellers have shown they will do what it takes to deceive the customer. For example going to the Steam checkout page it very clearly states that I have the option to "Purchase for myself" or "Purchase as a gift". I, like most English speakers, understand the word "Purchase" to mean something very specific. The words license, lease, rental, etc. do not even exist anywhere on any page in the checkout flow all the way through entering your payment information. I can only assume this omission is by design.
  - YawningAngel 4y ago
    In fairness to Valve, they don't take the games you've bought away
    - js8 4y ago
      They don't, because unlike Ubisoft, they're mostly a middleman. They run the marketplace for other game vendors and so they have reputation to uphold. However, Ubisoft is primarily a game developer, so there is a moral hazard of them screwing you. We all hate middlemen but this shows why they're needed (in the absence of regulation).
      - iamstupidsimple 4y ago
        Valve is also a games developer, and they never pulled any of their old or failed games. You can still play Artifact or Ricochet multiplayer (if you really want).
    - JZerf 4y ago
      This isn't entirely true. Most (all?) of the games require the Steam client which they are constantly updating and increasing the system requirements for. Systems that could previously run the Steam client and games just fine can no longer run those same games after a while. If I remember correctly the Steam client no longer supports systems running Windows XP, Windows Vista, OS X versions before 10.10, etc... to name a few. This is currently preventing me from running some games I've purchased and I will no longer be making any purchases on Steam until they resolve this problem.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  While there is no easy way to discover for which game it is the case, many if not most games on steam are actually DRM free. The choice is with the dev/publisher to include steamworks DRM.
- zokier 4y ago
  You don't generally own any (digital) media or software at all that you purchase.
- mlindner 4y ago
  > You don't own your games on steam On Steam at least games don't depend on Steam for network play, nor do they depend on Steam's existence for them to work.
  - remram 4y ago
    They really do though. You can't start most games without Steam running, unless you replace the Steam DLL that those games link against (but that is considered "cracking"). They is a fraction of Steam games that don't integrate with Steam in any way and therefore can be started by running their binary, but in my experience that is not most games.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    Even offline mode stops working if Steam goes long enough without being able to phone home. Your games will not function without Steam
    - mlindner 4y ago
      That's not true. There's no feature of offline mode that requires it to phone home every so often. It works indefinitely.
- dghughes 4y ago
  >You don't own your games on steam, uplay, or any other drm filled service. Off-topic I know but Samsung retroactively disabled the oxygen sensor software for Samsung phones in Canada. I had been using it for a few years but one day after an update it was disabled by Samsung. The physical sensor still existed obviously but it was no longer usable on a Samsung phone that I owned. I think that should be illegal.
  - brokenmachine 4y ago
    100%. I can't wait until consumer laws hit all the phone shenanigans. As a general rule, it should be illegal to issue updates that are not easily consumer-revokable to any device, if it changes functionality to be different to the time of purchase.
- highwaylights 4y ago
  GOG doesn’t solve this for the online games mentioned. You’d just be left with the files and license to play a game which no longer exists and therefore still can’t be played.
- shakna 4y ago
  > You don't own your games on steam, uplay, or any other drm filled service. Unless you live in a country with actual consumer rights. Like Australia, as Steam found out when they tried to claim that their games weren't actually goods [0]. I think that the headline article with Ubisoft will also attract the attention of the ACCC, because how they're withdrawing access to a sold good's service, particularly the withdrawal of DLC, is likely to breach the conditions for how you're allowed to advertise and sell items in Australia. [0] https://www.techradar.com/news/valve-has-copped-a-audollar3-million-fine-for-breaching-australias-consumer-laws https://www.techradar.com/news/valve-has-copped-a-audollar3-...
- tpoacher 4y ago
  I love gog, and have gone through a similar shift for any games that I can. However, I hate to point out that, GoG does in fact have some games with DRM, even though they make a big deal of the fact that they are an anti-DRM shop, and they get away with it buy pretending the definition of DRM is different to what most people think. E.g. I recently bought Worms WMD. You need a Galaxy account to play. I'm not even sure you can cross-play with Steam, I think you can't. Without it, the game is crippled. I would not have bought it if I had known.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    GoG should refund you for that if you run into it in the future. I don't buy games that require accounts with 3rd parties or need some weird client installed. I eventually installed Steam, but that's it for me. I'm not installing Galaxy either, and GoG has developed some dark patterns to try to push it on you (links to the actual installers keep getting buried deeper and deeper) but as long as they continue to let you download games without it I'm happy enough.
  - zbird 4y ago
    Some DRM does indeed make it into the shop, and ideally it shouldn't. Luckily, the 1-star reviews follow very quickly.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > If you want to own your games, get used to either having old games and going to flea markets to find them, or buy from GOG. You forgot the great equalizer that is internet piracy. Download cracked copies of every single game in your steam library and you'll be fine for as long you can emulate your current platform. It doesn't stop online services from being shut down, but it does mean you can at least play games offline in 15-20 years as well as you can do it now, not matter what happens to steam or your account. I'll say I love GoG though, and it's the first place I look when I'm buying PC games.
papito 4y ago
I always assume I am buying single-player features. Who would want to commit to maintaining multiplayer for an ancient game?
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  The DLC single player features you bought are also being removed. Expansions, other scenarios, etc.
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  > Who would want to commit to maintaining multiplayer for an ancient game? This is part of why I believe in making multi-player exceptionally cheap and stable over time. I'm building serverlesss game infrastructure which is super cheap. It's a small tragedy when a multi-player games loses critical mass because the operational and maintenance costs don't out weight the revenue.
  - mh- 4y ago
    I'm curious which serverless product/provider supports the necessary low-latency requirements (read: UDP support.) Or are you literally building your own atop something else?
    - mathgladiator 4y ago
      I'm building my own, and I'm currently using WebSocket. I intend to integrate towards WebTransport at some point, but I need the WebSocket fallback since the world is not too kind to QUIC.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    Thought about just having dedicated hosted servers the players can setup? 0 cost for you.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      If you did that, what would stop everyone from just pirating your game?
_fat_santa 4y ago
As much as I don't like a company taking something away that you paid for, where is the line when it comes to online games? Most of the games on that list are from 2009-2013 which makes them all 9-12 years old at this point. At what point can you say the company has done enough, because keeping the servers running indefinitely is clearly unsustainable.
- cwillu 4y ago
  A server that exists solely to unlock local content. --------------- <- the line A server that exists to facilitate online play.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  The line is "whenever they're old enough that the publisher doesn't see any commercial disadvantage to releasing an update that removes all DRM, unlocks all DLC, and allows multiplayer without a centralized server".
  - torstenvl 4y ago
    Revamping multiplayer to be entirely P2P seems a bit excessive if there's no commercial advantage left. I would be satisfied with releasing the server as freeware (or open-source!) and adding a feature to set the multiplayer server by domain or IP address.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      Yes, I'd be fine with that too. As long as there's zero functionality lost by the central servers being turned off, I don't care how it's done.
      - Ekaros 4y ago
        I'm fine with losing some functionality. Let's say community leader boards. Ofc, a nice thing would be then to provide API description and configuration options and allow fans to implement their own.
public_defender 4y ago
I read a really excellent article once (which I think was about itunes or kindle) about how the modern content delivery business model relies on creating ambiguity between buying and licensing. Like for example, the seller wants to be sure that if you lose your game you have to "buy" it again rather than just prove your identity and continuing license to use, but they can still control what device it goes on and for how long. So here we have Ubisoft taking away, I presume, some amount of single player downloaded content from people who "bought" it because they don't want to maintain the servers that confirm they continue to be licensed to use it. Sure, the company needs to control their resource commitments, but this sort of exposes the whole shell game. It would have been smarter of them to just unlock the downloadables when the servers go offline. It would be cheap goodwill.
- zokier 4y ago
  There is not that much ambiguity in practice when realistically consumers never fully purchase any (digital) media. So its always licensing. Only exceptions that come to mind are commissioned work, but then the ownership status should be pretty clear.
  - public_defender 4y ago
    I'm not an intellectual property lawyer, but I'm sure you're right that there's no _legal_ ambiguity with these "purchases." The point is that ambiguity is deliberately generated in the mind of the consumer in order to have the marketing benefits of a sale (and create the fiction that the user has property, which if mishandled would need to be replaced), while also heavily restricting use of the content under an onerous license.
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      What would consumers think they were buying if not a license to it? How would it work if everyone bought the actual copyright? What else could you be buying?
      - 4y ago
LinuxBender 4y ago
Are they going to provide the code to run private servers or is the goal to get people to stop playing older games and spend more on new games? Is the deadpool timer ticking on GhostRecon and all the other FarCry games?
olivermarks 4y ago
Adobe Creative suite (photoshop.illustrator etc) started this ownership ambiguity back in the CS4 era, the last version you could buy on DVDs. There are an awful lot of people running old mac os's to keep using this version. It does phone home and has some suspicious bugs that may be associated with that so some are paranoid enough to keep their dedicated CS4 computer offline. This is high cost software that people rely on for business but since that era our phones and macs update all the time in the background, rendering sw we thought we owned non operational and requiring 'upgrade$'. It's insidious and has created a whole generation who feel 'ownership' is ephemeral and at the whim of the sw creator, while being encouraged to think of products like creative suite as pay as you go, pay to play rental services. We really need to get some user rights laws back in place around the idea that if you buy something you own it permanently because vehicles are rapidly evolving to be rental software cash cows too.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  I have DVDs of cs5 I think, but you still need their activation service or a crack to use them.
  - olivermarks 4y ago
    Yes I think CS5 is a lot harder to keep running due to the Adobe activation 'service'. What I find fascinating is a whole generation of people learnt last century how to use Adobe sw on cracked Photoshop and others, an invaluable trained user base. Adobe have gone right to the other extreme of creating a walled garden with very tight monetization, which must surely result in a rapidly shrinking user base? I've also heard horror stories of Adobe going after publicly listed companies who have multiple licenses for CS but who have people in offices in other countries who have gone shadow IT and are running unlicensed creative suites, with Adobe insisting they can sue the multinational company for license revenue for every single employee the company has worldwide. None of this is healthy, whether a game, creative software or a car....
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
haunter 4y ago
Same as Fortnite on iOS. Epic couldn’t upgrade but at least it was playable as an old version. Then one day Apple removed the app from the purchased history so you can’t download it anymore. Unless you had it on your device or you have the ipa file on your computer.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > or you have the ipa file on your computer And remember that these have DRM, so your IPA file won't let me install the app on my device.
daenz 4y ago
>Closing the online services for some older games allows us to focus our resources on delivering great experiences for players who are playing newer or more popular titles. Then release a container image of your last working server software so that anyone can host it privately. And release a patch to the games to allow pointing at a private server.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  Having worked on games that old with services, docker didnt exist and I don't work there anymore, I built the server. The ami+server has been chugging omg with minor os updated since 2011. The software would be a pain to dockerize and relies on a config/deploy system that is megacorp proprietary and some internal security libraries with console signing keys for auth that are baked into the binary. We'd have to release the source, libraries, and describe the auth system. It's really not realistic to do what your saying. Then again my feature is only a part of the game and I designed it so you'd get 80% only hosting parts of it statically on S3. Provided as context. The amount of effort the company (not ubi) has given to keep the servers running since 2011 and through gdpr is surprising given how few people actually use the feature. It's be way cheaper to refund the 10s of people actually playing their full price game license. many more people than actually playing would be offended though that we shut the feature down.
  - daenz 4y ago
    Well, if Ubisoft starts to see a sales hit from these shenanigans that is greater than the development costs for the migration, I think they'll be able to summon the willpower to accomplish the task. Even just half-assing it and asking the community to help would make a lot of people happy. People reverse-engineer closed games/consoles/services all the time. That's what a lot of cheat patches are anyways.
    - tpoacher 4y ago
      The problem here is there is no direct way or feedback mechanism to link "lost sales" to this issue, other than people messaging directly. Otherwise, it's the kind of thing that usually ends up as a positive feedback loop: "We need more money" -> "Cripple some old games" -> "Users are buying less of our games" -> We need more money" -> "Cripple more old games" -> ... We've seen it before with DRM, we've seen it before with microtransactions. When there's no organic way to complain other than "don't buy", execs don't get the message.
zokier 4y ago
> It's worth remembering that every live service game will one day stop getting official support and eventually shut down Obviously yes, and it was as obvious when those games were launched and sold. > This mass decommissioning also demonstrates the preservation issues inherent to walled garden online services Many game companies are not aspiring to build some everlasting cultural artifacts, but to provide entertainment today. Preservation is not some intrinsic moral obligation
- josephcsible 4y ago
  The issue isn't just that the publishers don't preserve the games themselves. The issue is that they go out of their way to do things to make it harder/impossible for anyone else to do so either.
- sD82niNNdp6pYTA 4y ago
  > Obviously yes, and it was as obvious when those games were launched and sold. It was obvious that they'd become a pile of junk bits in less than a decade? > Many game companies are not aspiring to build some everlasting cultural artifacts, but to provide entertainment today. Preservation is not some intrinsic moral obligation Okay? That might apply if they were simply, say, no longer selling the product (although at that point there's no reason for them to retain their copyright and other parties should be free to rip, crack, distribute, etc). But that's not the case here. They're taking something which users may have already preserved and saying you can't fully use it anymore.
Teknoman117 4y ago
They make mention of Overwatch towards the end - that's sort of happening later this year. Blizzard has stated that when Overwatch 2 is released, Overwatch 1 will no longer be accessible. The do say that "player unlocked content will transfer over" but you'll lose the game dynamics of the first game forever... Edit - grammar
- beeboop 4y ago
  Wait, what? When OW2 comes out and I don't want to buy it, I can't play OW1 that I already purchased anymore?
  - Teknoman117 4y ago
    OW2 is apparently free, but yeah, basically this.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > The do say that "player unlocked content will transfer over" but you'll lose the game dynamics of the first game forever... This is something I don't like about the modern game landscape. But it appears to be overwhelmingly popular, for reasons that escape me. Every time an existing game is updated, you lose the dynamics of the first game forever. How is Overwatch 2 replacing Overwatch 1 any different from that?
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    Updates tend to improve games. It's not that surprisingly they're popular. OW2, however, is going to be a very different game. And from the look of it... much worse.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > Updates tend to improve games. That's one kind of update. It's not obvious that it's the majority of updates. The modal update appears to be motivated explicitly by the concern "we thought you might get bored if the rules of the game were too stable, so we're changing some of them".
Kukumber 4y ago
- virtual_void 4y ago
  That’s a lot of claims you’re making there with regards to people not caring at the time. You should back them up with evidence. It might be challenging to do so considering you’re stating all this stuff as absolutes then claiming it’s market manipulation.
  - Kukumber 4y ago
    It's already documented, you just have to not be lazy and do a simple google search, flagging comments doesn't change the facts
    - virtual_void 4y ago
      You’re just stating that “no one” complained about other events that are similar then presented that as argument for market manipulation. It’s a complete straw man argument for market manipulation that does not even manage to make a provable case for the straw man part. Stating things without evidence and saying “you find it out” is clearly in bad faith and can be dismissed as low value. That’s what happened here. Fwiw i didn’t flag it but clearly others found the comment to be of low value too.
      - Kukumber 4y ago
        > Stating things without evidence and saying “you find it out” is clearly in bad faith and can be dismissed as low value. That’s what happened here. I thought it was common knowledge, my bad, i will try to be more precise in my interventions in the future
dark-star 4y ago
Spoiler: you didn't buy them. You just licensed/leased/borrowed them to play. If you had bought them, they would be on a DVD, in your home, and they couldn't take them away.
- public_defender 4y ago
  You don't own the content on DVDs either. You own the disc and you've been granted a limited license to view/play the content.
  - teddyh 4y ago
    Strictly speaking, ownership does not apply to content. One can hold the copyright, or not. You own the DVD, but you are not the copyright holder. Also: Copyright law only disallows you from copying the DVD (and some other things, like making a public performance of the work, etc.), any license document which accompanies the DVD is irrelevant, and cannot remove any rights you already have. If the license would be considered a contract, it would be irrelevant since you have not agreed to it, nor signed it (or even read it). If the license would be considered a copyright license, it would only apply when making a copy (or public performance, etc.) of the work; it does not apply for you simply watching the DVD. In short, no, you have not been “granted a license” to view/play the content of a DVD – you don’t need one.
  - dark-star 4y ago
    Indeed, and Copyright etc. still applies, of course. But in most jurisdictions, what you do with a DVD that you bought, in your own home, is totally up to you, so you can install the game even if the company that created it no longer exists. Heck, in most jurisdictions you can even legally disassemble the game and remove any form of online activation or similar, if the servers are no longer available
- sowbug 4y ago
  Notice to Ubisoft: in any agreement between you and me, the term "pay" signifies a loan. Full balance lent (plus accrued interest) is due upon any material change in the product or service sold/rented/licensed/leased. By continuing to offer me its products, Ubisoft accepts this contract term.
pelagicAustral 4y ago
The kind of quality they’ve been imprinting in their games in the last 10 years, I’d call this garbage collection.
davemtl 4y ago
There's a mixed bag of articles surrounding this. If you've bought the game on Steam or other platform of choice, you will retain access to that game. Online game play and DLC that requires the on-line component is going to be retired. PC Gamer published and updated this article soon after: https://www.pcgamer.com/ubisofts-online-decommissioning-may-render-three-games-unplayable-for-people-who-bought-them/ https://www.pcgamer.com/ubisofts-online-decommissioning-may-... Ubisoft's FAQ: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/help/gameplay/article/decommissioning-of-online-services-september-2022/000102396 https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/help/gameplay/article/decommis...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
t_mann 4y ago
> Ubisoft about to take away games you bought The headline seems click-baity, and strictly speaking it's wrong - they're taking away one (online-only) game, the others are losing online features. Ubisoft pulling online support for multiple games would have been a more adequate title.
- em-bee 4y ago
  The actual headline of the article is "Ubisoft to pull online from older games, which also takes away your DLC", so the problem is the HN title not matching the article, which should be fixed.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  More than half of them are losing access to DLC, which in many cases is part of the game -- in the form of expansions.
Ken_At_EM 4y ago
Call me old fashioned but I expect games to come on physical media, be able to enjoy multiplayer on a LAN and be able to enjoy them long after the company who created them is gone.
- onion2k 4y ago
  Ignoring everything else, making millions of plastic discs and transporting them to people is incredibly bad for the planet. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a DVD of a game has a carbon footprint several thousand times greater than the digital equivalent. As much as I dislike companies having the ability to revoke licenses and ownership, the climate impact of physical media means they should remain firmly in the past.
  - SamuelAdams 4y ago
    Also DVDs don’t last forever. Some sources say they last 10-30 years, depending on the manufacturer and quality. I’m more curious about why people think things ought to be preserved forever at all costs? I’m sure there are many video games from the 70’s and 80’s that have been forgotten.
- JZerf 4y ago
  I'd also add that distributing an installation file that requires no activation server is also sufficient. Physical media is getting kind of dated as seen by many devices no longer even including optical drives.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > Physical media is getting kind of dated as seen by many devices no longer even including optical drives. the lack of optical drives in consoles isn't because the tech is 'dated' it's because forcing users to online-only and preventing players from owning physical media they can let their friends borrow or sell used makes more money for gaming companies and gives them greater opportunity to collect your data and push ads at you. It gives them greater control to censor, patch, and remove content too.
y42 4y ago
scnr - I'm going to be devils advocate here: First: I don't like this click bait headline. Ubisoft does not take away the game I bought, Ubisoft deactivates the online feature. But saying that I totally agree with you that this is a bitch move. But hey, let's think about "the system" here: The internet and digital products changed some basic capitalistic processes: If you bought a conventional good, a chair or shoes, you were never able to just copy them. You have this one unit. If you bought some piece of software, you could easily duplicate it and give it away. That is this great pain point that "the industry" is facing since the internet emerges (it's not the internet, I know, I'm just simplifying things here). Now "the industry" tries to find a way out of this dilemma - and that is totally fair. The concept of "buying" a piece of software, a product, does not fit to the conventional concept of buying goods. A shoe is a shoe. You used it and at some point you throw it away. A software needs to be maintained. Someone needs to maintain it. It's just not comparable to a physical good and therefore the buying process cannot be applied. Sure, Ubisoft could help the customer to get over it: Offer a server that you host for your own. I'm pretty sure: At some point in the future they will. I don't like the concept of paying a monthly fee to use a software. Like probably most of us. But keep in mind: You cannot compare a piece of source code to a pair of shoes. So eventually we have to accept different business models like that.
- jtokoph 4y ago
  For many of the titles, purchased DLC will no longer work. Presumably because the game asks the server if the DLC has been purchased and the server will no longer be there to reply. So yes, people will be able to play the base games but will no longer be able to play the additional content they purchased.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > Presumably because the game asks the server if the DLC has been purchased and the server will no longer be there to reply. Seems very easy to patch out. They should release one final patch that downloads all DLC for everyone and removes the server check. That'd take a lot of the sting out of losing multiplayer and be a nice way of saying "thanks for supporting us and playing our games after all this time" instead of saying "fuck you for supporting us, now buy the remaster and pay us for it all again suckers!"
sD82niNNdp6pYTA 4y ago
ubisoft be like "you know that game we released 3 years ago and are still selling for $20? yeah you won't be able to play it after September" Also... can we talk about the fact that they're killing off these old games because of, supposedly, the maintenance burden... but they're keeping the remastered versions. Wouldn't it have been simpler to just use the same game server in the first place?!
kodah 4y ago
I'm a big fan of mandatory source release after a period of time. That line of belief isn't specific to this situation, but it definitely has overlap.
spotplay 4y ago
Isn't the eu directive 2019/770 specifically against something like this?
zbird 4y ago
Always buy DRM-free at https://www.gog.com/ https://www.gog.com/
MacroChip 4y ago
The author is correct about centralized NFTs not being what you expect them to be. They are wrong that NFTs are debunked. A true web3 game will never have the servers shut down. Everyone collectively pays for the server costs. Every time you do something in the game, you pay for your little slice of server time.
greatgib 4y ago
Additionally, the remastered versions of listed games will be retaining online features. This is the summum of the fraud, they can deprecate and then resell to you what you have already paid for to continue playing the same game for a marginal cost to them.

219 points by snikolaev 4y ago

Bookmarking for my list of why DRM is bad.

The company named 2K pulls this every year where they disable the multiplayer and even single-player story-mode of their NBA 2K games that are less than 2 years old (they turned off NBA 2K20 servers in Dec 2021)

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

You don't own your games on steam, uplay, or any other drm filled service. If you want to own your games, get used to either having old games and going to flea markets to find them, or buy from GOG. I've made a deliberate and purposeful shift to buy my games from GOG for this reason. Except for a stupid prank ( https://www.criticalhit.net/gaming/breaking-gog-com-shuts-down-we-investigate/ https://www.criticalhit.net/gaming/breaking-gog-com-shuts-do... ) that - to this day - I am a bit annoyed by, I've greatly appreciated their service.

public_defender 4y ago
What's the prank? That article just says gog.com went offline.
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  https://techgage.com/news/gogcom_is_not_shutting_down_after_all/ https://techgage.com/news/gogcom_is_not_shutting_down_after_... It was a marketing prank. Someone, high up in their company, thought it would be HIGH HUMOR to pretend their site went down before users could download their drm free games. They relaunched a completely new redesigned site a few days later, but this was a mistkae. I still haven't forgotten or forgiven about this, but I still buy from them because the alternative is much worst.
  - macintux 4y ago
    Seems like a perfect example of the pitfall described in the John Scalzi blogpost discussed here earlier today. https://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/06/16/the-failure-state-of-clever/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/06/16/the-failure-state-of-... Update: the highlight for anyone who doesn't care to follow a random link: > The failure mode of clever is “asshole.”
- ozmodiar 4y ago
  Gog pranked people by saying they were going offline and you would lose your games. I guess it was to highlight that they're the only service where you can back up your games and don't need to worry about DRM, but there was a lot of confusion and people didn't find it that funny at the time.
  - OrangeMonkey 4y ago
    > people didn't find it that funny at the time. Or, to this day.
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    Humorists all over the western world are finding that the newest members of their audience don't even speak their language any more. Kind of reminds me of the Funnybot episode of South Park. I for one think the prank that GOG pulled is HILARIOUS
mccorrinall 4y ago
You don’t even own your steam account. If you forget your password, but have other ways to proof (7+ years of purchase history of your credit card and paypal, your ID etc) they will still say: „go fuck yourself, buy all games again.“ Happened to me. Awful customer service.
- sidlls 4y ago
  They have an obligation to provide you with the items/services you purchased. That includes access to them through an account. If you can actually prove the account is yours, you should be able to. Of course, it might be ridiculously expensive (go through the courts)--but that's what these companies are counting on.
  - xuki 4y ago
    You don't even need to go to court, just get a lawyer to write a letter will go way further than any (overworked) customer service rep can help.
  - mccorrinall 4y ago
    After one year of sending tickets back and forth I just asked my credit card issuer to charge back all purchases ever made. Going to court or similar was not an option as a poor student :/
- djbusby 4y ago
  Arbitration clause? Or small-claims court?
  - mokus 4y ago
    Perhaps if they try to force you to arbitration you can push back and demand proof that you agreed to their terms, which is conveniently achieved by creating an account.
    - fdupress 4y ago
reset-password 4y ago
You don't own them, but they sure do everything possible to obfuscate that fact. Regulation will likely be needed as the sellers have shown they will do what it takes to deceive the customer. For example going to the Steam checkout page it very clearly states that I have the option to "Purchase for myself" or "Purchase as a gift". I, like most English speakers, understand the word "Purchase" to mean something very specific. The words license, lease, rental, etc. do not even exist anywhere on any page in the checkout flow all the way through entering your payment information. I can only assume this omission is by design.
- YawningAngel 4y ago
  In fairness to Valve, they don't take the games you've bought away
  - js8 4y ago
    They don't, because unlike Ubisoft, they're mostly a middleman. They run the marketplace for other game vendors and so they have reputation to uphold. However, Ubisoft is primarily a game developer, so there is a moral hazard of them screwing you. We all hate middlemen but this shows why they're needed (in the absence of regulation).
    - iamstupidsimple 4y ago
      Valve is also a games developer, and they never pulled any of their old or failed games. You can still play Artifact or Ricochet multiplayer (if you really want).
  - JZerf 4y ago
    This isn't entirely true. Most (all?) of the games require the Steam client which they are constantly updating and increasing the system requirements for. Systems that could previously run the Steam client and games just fine can no longer run those same games after a while. If I remember correctly the Steam client no longer supports systems running Windows XP, Windows Vista, OS X versions before 10.10, etc... to name a few. This is currently preventing me from running some games I've purchased and I will no longer be making any purchases on Steam until they resolve this problem.
Semaphor 4y ago
While there is no easy way to discover for which game it is the case, many if not most games on steam are actually DRM free. The choice is with the dev/publisher to include steamworks DRM.
zokier 4y ago
You don't generally own any (digital) media or software at all that you purchase.
mlindner 4y ago
> You don't own your games on steam On Steam at least games don't depend on Steam for network play, nor do they depend on Steam's existence for them to work.
- remram 4y ago
  They really do though. You can't start most games without Steam running, unless you replace the Steam DLL that those games link against (but that is considered "cracking"). They is a fraction of Steam games that don't integrate with Steam in any way and therefore can be started by running their binary, but in my experience that is not most games.
- autoexec 4y ago
  Even offline mode stops working if Steam goes long enough without being able to phone home. Your games will not function without Steam
  - mlindner 4y ago
    That's not true. There's no feature of offline mode that requires it to phone home every so often. It works indefinitely.
dghughes 4y ago
>You don't own your games on steam, uplay, or any other drm filled service. Off-topic I know but Samsung retroactively disabled the oxygen sensor software for Samsung phones in Canada. I had been using it for a few years but one day after an update it was disabled by Samsung. The physical sensor still existed obviously but it was no longer usable on a Samsung phone that I owned. I think that should be illegal.
- brokenmachine 4y ago
  100%. I can't wait until consumer laws hit all the phone shenanigans. As a general rule, it should be illegal to issue updates that are not easily consumer-revokable to any device, if it changes functionality to be different to the time of purchase.
highwaylights 4y ago
GOG doesn’t solve this for the online games mentioned. You’d just be left with the files and license to play a game which no longer exists and therefore still can’t be played.
shakna 4y ago
> You don't own your games on steam, uplay, or any other drm filled service. Unless you live in a country with actual consumer rights. Like Australia, as Steam found out when they tried to claim that their games weren't actually goods [0]. I think that the headline article with Ubisoft will also attract the attention of the ACCC, because how they're withdrawing access to a sold good's service, particularly the withdrawal of DLC, is likely to breach the conditions for how you're allowed to advertise and sell items in Australia. [0] https://www.techradar.com/news/valve-has-copped-a-audollar3-million-fine-for-breaching-australias-consumer-laws https://www.techradar.com/news/valve-has-copped-a-audollar3-...
tpoacher 4y ago
I love gog, and have gone through a similar shift for any games that I can. However, I hate to point out that, GoG does in fact have some games with DRM, even though they make a big deal of the fact that they are an anti-DRM shop, and they get away with it buy pretending the definition of DRM is different to what most people think. E.g. I recently bought Worms WMD. You need a Galaxy account to play. I'm not even sure you can cross-play with Steam, I think you can't. Without it, the game is crippled. I would not have bought it if I had known.
- autoexec 4y ago
  GoG should refund you for that if you run into it in the future. I don't buy games that require accounts with 3rd parties or need some weird client installed. I eventually installed Steam, but that's it for me. I'm not installing Galaxy either, and GoG has developed some dark patterns to try to push it on you (links to the actual installers keep getting buried deeper and deeper) but as long as they continue to let you download games without it I'm happy enough.
- zbird 4y ago
  Some DRM does indeed make it into the shop, and ideally it shouldn't. Luckily, the 1-star reviews follow very quickly.
autoexec 4y ago
> If you want to own your games, get used to either having old games and going to flea markets to find them, or buy from GOG. You forgot the great equalizer that is internet piracy. Download cracked copies of every single game in your steam library and you'll be fine for as long you can emulate your current platform. It doesn't stop online services from being shut down, but it does mean you can at least play games offline in 15-20 years as well as you can do it now, not matter what happens to steam or your account. I'll say I love GoG though, and it's the first place I look when I'm buying PC games.

papito 4y ago

I always assume I am buying single-player features. Who would want to commit to maintaining multiplayer for an ancient game?

OrangeMonkey 4y ago
The DLC single player features you bought are also being removed. Expansions, other scenarios, etc.
mathgladiator 4y ago
> Who would want to commit to maintaining multiplayer for an ancient game? This is part of why I believe in making multi-player exceptionally cheap and stable over time. I'm building serverlesss game infrastructure which is super cheap. It's a small tragedy when a multi-player games loses critical mass because the operational and maintenance costs don't out weight the revenue.
- mh- 4y ago
  I'm curious which serverless product/provider supports the necessary low-latency requirements (read: UDP support.) Or are you literally building your own atop something else?
  - mathgladiator 4y ago
    I'm building my own, and I'm currently using WebSocket. I intend to integrate towards WebTransport at some point, but I need the WebSocket fallback since the world is not too kind to QUIC.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  Thought about just having dedicated hosted servers the players can setup? 0 cost for you.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    If you did that, what would stop everyone from just pirating your game?

_fat_santa 4y ago

As much as I don't like a company taking something away that you paid for, where is the line when it comes to online games? Most of the games on that list are from 2009-2013 which makes them all 9-12 years old at this point. At what point can you say the company has done enough, because keeping the servers running indefinitely is clearly unsustainable.

cwillu 4y ago
A server that exists solely to unlock local content. --------------- <- the line A server that exists to facilitate online play.
josephcsible 4y ago
The line is "whenever they're old enough that the publisher doesn't see any commercial disadvantage to releasing an update that removes all DRM, unlocks all DLC, and allows multiplayer without a centralized server".
- torstenvl 4y ago
  Revamping multiplayer to be entirely P2P seems a bit excessive if there's no commercial advantage left. I would be satisfied with releasing the server as freeware (or open-source!) and adding a feature to set the multiplayer server by domain or IP address.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    Yes, I'd be fine with that too. As long as there's zero functionality lost by the central servers being turned off, I don't care how it's done.
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      I'm fine with losing some functionality. Let's say community leader boards. Ofc, a nice thing would be then to provide API description and configuration options and allow fans to implement their own.

public_defender 4y ago

I read a really excellent article once (which I think was about itunes or kindle) about how the modern content delivery business model relies on creating ambiguity between buying and licensing. Like for example, the seller wants to be sure that if you lose your game you have to "buy" it again rather than just prove your identity and continuing license to use, but they can still control what device it goes on and for how long. So here we have Ubisoft taking away, I presume, some amount of single player downloaded content from people who "bought" it because they don't want to maintain the servers that confirm they continue to be licensed to use it. Sure, the company needs to control their resource commitments, but this sort of exposes the whole shell game. It would have been smarter of them to just unlock the downloadables when the servers go offline. It would be cheap goodwill.

zokier 4y ago
There is not that much ambiguity in practice when realistically consumers never fully purchase any (digital) media. So its always licensing. Only exceptions that come to mind are commissioned work, but then the ownership status should be pretty clear.
- public_defender 4y ago
  I'm not an intellectual property lawyer, but I'm sure you're right that there's no _legal_ ambiguity with these "purchases." The point is that ambiguity is deliberately generated in the mind of the consumer in order to have the marketing benefits of a sale (and create the fiction that the user has property, which if mishandled would need to be replaced), while also heavily restricting use of the content under an onerous license.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    What would consumers think they were buying if not a license to it? How would it work if everyone bought the actual copyright? What else could you be buying?
    - 4y ago

LinuxBender 4y ago

Are they going to provide the code to run private servers or is the goal to get people to stop playing older games and spend more on new games? Is the deadpool timer ticking on GhostRecon and all the other FarCry games?

olivermarks 4y ago

Adobe Creative suite (photoshop.illustrator etc) started this ownership ambiguity back in the CS4 era, the last version you could buy on DVDs. There are an awful lot of people running old mac os's to keep using this version. It does phone home and has some suspicious bugs that may be associated with that so some are paranoid enough to keep their dedicated CS4 computer offline. This is high cost software that people rely on for business but since that era our phones and macs update all the time in the background, rendering sw we thought we owned non operational and requiring 'upgrade$'. It's insidious and has created a whole generation who feel 'ownership' is ephemeral and at the whim of the sw creator, while being encouraged to think of products like creative suite as pay as you go, pay to play rental services. We really need to get some user rights laws back in place around the idea that if you buy something you own it permanently because vehicles are rapidly evolving to be rental software cash cows too.

LegitShady 4y ago
I have DVDs of cs5 I think, but you still need their activation service or a crack to use them.
- olivermarks 4y ago
  Yes I think CS5 is a lot harder to keep running due to the Adobe activation 'service'. What I find fascinating is a whole generation of people learnt last century how to use Adobe sw on cracked Photoshop and others, an invaluable trained user base. Adobe have gone right to the other extreme of creating a walled garden with very tight monetization, which must surely result in a rapidly shrinking user base? I've also heard horror stories of Adobe going after publicly listed companies who have multiple licenses for CS but who have people in offices in other countries who have gone shadow IT and are running unlicensed creative suites, with Adobe insisting they can sue the multinational company for license revenue for every single employee the company has worldwide. None of this is healthy, whether a game, creative software or a car....
  - bobthepanda 4y ago

haunter 4y ago

Same as Fortnite on iOS. Epic couldn’t upgrade but at least it was playable as an old version. Then one day Apple removed the app from the purchased history so you can’t download it anymore. Unless you had it on your device or you have the ipa file on your computer.

josephcsible 4y ago
> or you have the ipa file on your computer And remember that these have DRM, so your IPA file won't let me install the app on my device.

daenz 4y ago

>Closing the online services for some older games allows us to focus our resources on delivering great experiences for players who are playing newer or more popular titles. Then release a container image of your last working server software so that anyone can host it privately. And release a patch to the games to allow pointing at a private server.

grogenaut 4y ago
Having worked on games that old with services, docker didnt exist and I don't work there anymore, I built the server. The ami+server has been chugging omg with minor os updated since 2011. The software would be a pain to dockerize and relies on a config/deploy system that is megacorp proprietary and some internal security libraries with console signing keys for auth that are baked into the binary. We'd have to release the source, libraries, and describe the auth system. It's really not realistic to do what your saying. Then again my feature is only a part of the game and I designed it so you'd get 80% only hosting parts of it statically on S3. Provided as context. The amount of effort the company (not ubi) has given to keep the servers running since 2011 and through gdpr is surprising given how few people actually use the feature. It's be way cheaper to refund the 10s of people actually playing their full price game license. many more people than actually playing would be offended though that we shut the feature down.
- daenz 4y ago
  Well, if Ubisoft starts to see a sales hit from these shenanigans that is greater than the development costs for the migration, I think they'll be able to summon the willpower to accomplish the task. Even just half-assing it and asking the community to help would make a lot of people happy. People reverse-engineer closed games/consoles/services all the time. That's what a lot of cheat patches are anyways.
  - tpoacher 4y ago
    The problem here is there is no direct way or feedback mechanism to link "lost sales" to this issue, other than people messaging directly. Otherwise, it's the kind of thing that usually ends up as a positive feedback loop: "We need more money" -> "Cripple some old games" -> "Users are buying less of our games" -> We need more money" -> "Cripple more old games" -> ... We've seen it before with DRM, we've seen it before with microtransactions. When there's no organic way to complain other than "don't buy", execs don't get the message.

zokier 4y ago

> It's worth remembering that every live service game will one day stop getting official support and eventually shut down Obviously yes, and it was as obvious when those games were launched and sold. > This mass decommissioning also demonstrates the preservation issues inherent to walled garden online services Many game companies are not aspiring to build some everlasting cultural artifacts, but to provide entertainment today. Preservation is not some intrinsic moral obligation

josephcsible 4y ago
The issue isn't just that the publishers don't preserve the games themselves. The issue is that they go out of their way to do things to make it harder/impossible for anyone else to do so either.
sD82niNNdp6pYTA 4y ago
> Obviously yes, and it was as obvious when those games were launched and sold. It was obvious that they'd become a pile of junk bits in less than a decade? > Many game companies are not aspiring to build some everlasting cultural artifacts, but to provide entertainment today. Preservation is not some intrinsic moral obligation Okay? That might apply if they were simply, say, no longer selling the product (although at that point there's no reason for them to retain their copyright and other parties should be free to rip, crack, distribute, etc). But that's not the case here. They're taking something which users may have already preserved and saying you can't fully use it anymore.

Teknoman117 4y ago

They make mention of Overwatch towards the end - that's sort of happening later this year. Blizzard has stated that when Overwatch 2 is released, Overwatch 1 will no longer be accessible. The do say that "player unlocked content will transfer over" but you'll lose the game dynamics of the first game forever... Edit - grammar

beeboop 4y ago
Wait, what? When OW2 comes out and I don't want to buy it, I can't play OW1 that I already purchased anymore?
- Teknoman117 4y ago
  OW2 is apparently free, but yeah, basically this.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> The do say that "player unlocked content will transfer over" but you'll lose the game dynamics of the first game forever... This is something I don't like about the modern game landscape. But it appears to be overwhelmingly popular, for reasons that escape me. Every time an existing game is updated, you lose the dynamics of the first game forever. How is Overwatch 2 replacing Overwatch 1 any different from that?
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Updates tend to improve games. It's not that surprisingly they're popular. OW2, however, is going to be a very different game. And from the look of it... much worse.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > Updates tend to improve games. That's one kind of update. It's not obvious that it's the majority of updates. The modal update appears to be motivated explicitly by the concern "we thought you might get bored if the rules of the game were too stable, so we're changing some of them".

Kukumber 4y ago

virtual_void 4y ago
That’s a lot of claims you’re making there with regards to people not caring at the time. You should back them up with evidence. It might be challenging to do so considering you’re stating all this stuff as absolutes then claiming it’s market manipulation.
- Kukumber 4y ago
  It's already documented, you just have to not be lazy and do a simple google search, flagging comments doesn't change the facts
  - virtual_void 4y ago
    You’re just stating that “no one” complained about other events that are similar then presented that as argument for market manipulation. It’s a complete straw man argument for market manipulation that does not even manage to make a provable case for the straw man part. Stating things without evidence and saying “you find it out” is clearly in bad faith and can be dismissed as low value. That’s what happened here. Fwiw i didn’t flag it but clearly others found the comment to be of low value too.
    - Kukumber 4y ago
      > Stating things without evidence and saying “you find it out” is clearly in bad faith and can be dismissed as low value. That’s what happened here. I thought it was common knowledge, my bad, i will try to be more precise in my interventions in the future

dark-star 4y ago

Spoiler: you didn't buy them. You just licensed/leased/borrowed them to play. If you had bought them, they would be on a DVD, in your home, and they couldn't take them away.

public_defender 4y ago
You don't own the content on DVDs either. You own the disc and you've been granted a limited license to view/play the content.
- teddyh 4y ago
  Strictly speaking, ownership does not apply to content. One can hold the copyright, or not. You own the DVD, but you are not the copyright holder. Also: Copyright law only disallows you from copying the DVD (and some other things, like making a public performance of the work, etc.), any license document which accompanies the DVD is irrelevant, and cannot remove any rights you already have. If the license would be considered a contract, it would be irrelevant since you have not agreed to it, nor signed it (or even read it). If the license would be considered a copyright license, it would only apply when making a copy (or public performance, etc.) of the work; it does not apply for you simply watching the DVD. In short, no, you have not been “granted a license” to view/play the content of a DVD – you don’t need one.
- dark-star 4y ago
  Indeed, and Copyright etc. still applies, of course. But in most jurisdictions, what you do with a DVD that you bought, in your own home, is totally up to you, so you can install the game even if the company that created it no longer exists. Heck, in most jurisdictions you can even legally disassemble the game and remove any form of online activation or similar, if the servers are no longer available
sowbug 4y ago
Notice to Ubisoft: in any agreement between you and me, the term "pay" signifies a loan. Full balance lent (plus accrued interest) is due upon any material change in the product or service sold/rented/licensed/leased. By continuing to offer me its products, Ubisoft accepts this contract term.

pelagicAustral 4y ago

The kind of quality they’ve been imprinting in their games in the last 10 years, I’d call this garbage collection.

davemtl 4y ago

There's a mixed bag of articles surrounding this. If you've bought the game on Steam or other platform of choice, you will retain access to that game. Online game play and DLC that requires the on-line component is going to be retired. PC Gamer published and updated this article soon after: https://www.pcgamer.com/ubisofts-online-decommissioning-may-render-three-games-unplayable-for-people-who-bought-them/ https://www.pcgamer.com/ubisofts-online-decommissioning-may-... Ubisoft's FAQ: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/help/gameplay/article/decommissioning-of-online-services-september-2022/000102396 https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/help/gameplay/article/decommis...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

t_mann 4y ago

> Ubisoft about to take away games you bought The headline seems click-baity, and strictly speaking it's wrong - they're taking away one (online-only) game, the others are losing online features. Ubisoft pulling online support for multiple games would have been a more adequate title.

em-bee 4y ago
The actual headline of the article is "Ubisoft to pull online from older games, which also takes away your DLC", so the problem is the HN title not matching the article, which should be fixed.
mynameisvlad 4y ago
More than half of them are losing access to DLC, which in many cases is part of the game -- in the form of expansions.

Ken_At_EM 4y ago

Call me old fashioned but I expect games to come on physical media, be able to enjoy multiplayer on a LAN and be able to enjoy them long after the company who created them is gone.

onion2k 4y ago
Ignoring everything else, making millions of plastic discs and transporting them to people is incredibly bad for the planet. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a DVD of a game has a carbon footprint several thousand times greater than the digital equivalent. As much as I dislike companies having the ability to revoke licenses and ownership, the climate impact of physical media means they should remain firmly in the past.
- SamuelAdams 4y ago
  Also DVDs don’t last forever. Some sources say they last 10-30 years, depending on the manufacturer and quality. I’m more curious about why people think things ought to be preserved forever at all costs? I’m sure there are many video games from the 70’s and 80’s that have been forgotten.
JZerf 4y ago
I'd also add that distributing an installation file that requires no activation server is also sufficient. Physical media is getting kind of dated as seen by many devices no longer even including optical drives.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > Physical media is getting kind of dated as seen by many devices no longer even including optical drives. the lack of optical drives in consoles isn't because the tech is 'dated' it's because forcing users to online-only and preventing players from owning physical media they can let their friends borrow or sell used makes more money for gaming companies and gives them greater opportunity to collect your data and push ads at you. It gives them greater control to censor, patch, and remove content too.

y42 4y ago

scnr - I'm going to be devils advocate here: First: I don't like this click bait headline. Ubisoft does not take away the game I bought, Ubisoft deactivates the online feature. But saying that I totally agree with you that this is a bitch move. But hey, let's think about "the system" here: The internet and digital products changed some basic capitalistic processes: If you bought a conventional good, a chair or shoes, you were never able to just copy them. You have this one unit. If you bought some piece of software, you could easily duplicate it and give it away. That is this great pain point that "the industry" is facing since the internet emerges (it's not the internet, I know, I'm just simplifying things here). Now "the industry" tries to find a way out of this dilemma - and that is totally fair. The concept of "buying" a piece of software, a product, does not fit to the conventional concept of buying goods. A shoe is a shoe. You used it and at some point you throw it away. A software needs to be maintained. Someone needs to maintain it. It's just not comparable to a physical good and therefore the buying process cannot be applied. Sure, Ubisoft could help the customer to get over it: Offer a server that you host for your own. I'm pretty sure: At some point in the future they will. I don't like the concept of paying a monthly fee to use a software. Like probably most of us. But keep in mind: You cannot compare a piece of source code to a pair of shoes. So eventually we have to accept different business models like that.

jtokoph 4y ago
For many of the titles, purchased DLC will no longer work. Presumably because the game asks the server if the DLC has been purchased and the server will no longer be there to reply. So yes, people will be able to play the base games but will no longer be able to play the additional content they purchased.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > Presumably because the game asks the server if the DLC has been purchased and the server will no longer be there to reply. Seems very easy to patch out. They should release one final patch that downloads all DLC for everyone and removes the server check. That'd take a lot of the sting out of losing multiplayer and be a nice way of saying "thanks for supporting us and playing our games after all this time" instead of saying "fuck you for supporting us, now buy the remaster and pay us for it all again suckers!"

sD82niNNdp6pYTA 4y ago

ubisoft be like "you know that game we released 3 years ago and are still selling for $20? yeah you won't be able to play it after September" Also... can we talk about the fact that they're killing off these old games because of, supposedly, the maintenance burden... but they're keeping the remastered versions. Wouldn't it have been simpler to just use the same game server in the first place?!

kodah 4y ago

I'm a big fan of mandatory source release after a period of time. That line of belief isn't specific to this situation, but it definitely has overlap.

spotplay 4y ago

Isn't the eu directive 2019/770 specifically against something like this?

zbird 4y ago

Always buy DRM-free at https://www.gog.com/ https://www.gog.com/

MacroChip 4y ago

The author is correct about centralized NFTs not being what you expect them to be. They are wrong that NFTs are debunked. A true web3 game will never have the servers shut down. Everyone collectively pays for the server costs. Every time you do something in the game, you pay for your little slice of server time.

greatgib 4y ago

Additionally, the remastered versions of listed games will be retaining online features. This is the summum of the fraud, they can deprecate and then resell to you what you have already paid for to continue playing the same game for a marginal cost to them.