Ubisoft - Violating consumer rights

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I have been seeing interesting "PSA videos" (they're fanmade) which seem to talk about a recent controversy regarding Ubisoft taking down the game "The Crew" by shutting down its servers on March 31st, 2024.

Apparently, many of the consumers are unhappy and believe that Ubisoft has practically violated consumer rights by making the game unplayable even if the customers bought a copy of it. Reports have also been made that Ubisoft deleted digital licenses to the game itself, a move which many now consider a form of theft and corruption because the users were not warned about it and the users themselves OWNED the game that they bought with their money.

Worst part. The game wasn't made by Ubisoft. It was made by Ivory Tower in 2014 but was acquired by Ubisoft in 2015. So Ubisoft practically committed a serious crime by destroying a game made by someone else. That's like burning a painting of the Mona Lisa after the museum buys it. First, we have EA being greedy with the pay-to-win schemes and now we have Ubisoft who is destroying works from other developers after they acquire ownership. At this point, corporate greed seems ever noticeable and ever more hostile that it threatens the very environment of video game nostalgia and preservation.

Ubisoft was previously fined for breaching consumer laws in France in 2018. Digital ownership is protected under Art. L. 217-1 of the Consumer Code in France meaning that Ubisoft may as well be greatly fined in millions if the damage is that great to the customers.

An anti-Ubisoft activist website called "Stop Killing Games" estimates the player base of "The Crew" to have been 12 million at the time the game was shutdown. For more regarding consumer rights in France, see "Consumer Protection Laws and Regulations France 2024" (published April 12th, 2024).

"Digital License" is just a scam. If you lease it, you expect it to be taken away one day. If you rent it you also expect it to be taken away as neither is true ownership.

If people send a sizable amount of money for a game, they would assume they purchased it. Many buying these games might be minors and irrespectively, the terms and conditions are deliberately confusing, usually on page 23, paragraph 4 that you're not "purchasing"

They'll be destroyed in a European Court and I think even the US courts will rapidly tire of their antics. A lot of major companies are pushing the boat like this and they'll end up paying one day. They can't go "ooops, we didn't know" in court.

I wouldn't say that ubisoft has to respect the previous creator, the creator sold them their rights after all but what they're doing is still illegal.

Remember, if purchasing with what appears to be full price money isn't owning, then pirating isn't stealing. I pirate everything now.

I suspected this sort of thing would happen back when games and movies/shows first started going digital, but I went with it anyways and wasted so much money on games and movies just because certain people told me I was being silly for not trusting downloads.

Now that I myself have seen games and movies disappearing from digital libraries I realize I should have listened to my intuition.

This is why I'm going back to physical copies of games and movies.

If you don't have a physical copy in your hand, then they can't be trusted. If all they're offering is digital, always pirate.

A good advice is to make sure you have a physical copy of the game before the expiration date for you never know when the company is gonna make shady physical copies with viruses as a means of fighting against customers who use old games. This is just the beginning of it.

Thanks for the advice guys. From what I've heard the Sega Genesis mini seems trustworthy and its made by Sega with 40 quality built-in games. I'm getting one of those for my gaming fix plus a bluray player someday so I can watch movies the old fashion way on bluray and DVD.

I wouldn't say this is the beginning of it, this is the end of it.

Once a company has a reputation for criminality, then they hemorrhage money and ruin themselves. Significant public disdain has begun against unisoft and EA which alone will end up making them insolvent if they carry on.

If not the courts will force them to play ball with their reputation ruined by the ruling.

Pirate everything. Only if the developer appears trustworthy then purchase once you're satisfied with the product.

Let's not forget that EA bought PopCap which stole a Japanese game Puzzloop with their own "Zuma", basically diminishing any hope of a lawsuit against PopCap due to EA being rich and powerful. EA also caused that said Japanese company to collapse because of that. EA also laid off George Fan in 2012 because he didn't want "Plants vs Zombies 2" to be pay-to-win which is one of the most common money-making schemes that EA has when it comes to games.

The irony of people taking several steps backwards in tech because producers have become intolerably obnoxious.

My next "new" car might be a 2009 banger because of it. The thought of being grabbed and squeezed by the balls while handing over tens of K doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.

Look towards China too, they might actually become the better producer for virtually everything soon. Their products have shot up in quality and their dodgy business practices are becoming rapidly less dodgy than western ones. I grabbed a phone plug in Infiray T2 pro thermal for
£350 and its been great with no stupid licence agreements for the software.

"Gaming whales" are the biggest problem to gaming since its inception in the 70s. A company makes a game and only 4 "whale" addicts regularly forking over absurd money pays for the entire development.

I think that soon change. The whales can have their games and the 99.9% of other gamers will pay their money towards real developers.

Let's hope so.