Ubisoft Will Suspend and Then Delete Long-Inactive Accounts (pcgamer.com) 51
Leaving a Ubisoft account inactive for too long "apparently puts it at risk of permanent deletion," writes PC Gamer, calling the policy "a customer-unfriendly practice."
A piracy and anti-DRM focused Twitter account, PC_enjoyer, recently shared a screenshot of a Ubisoft support email telling the user that their Ubisoft account had been suspended for "inactivity," and would be "permanently closed" after 30 days. The email provided a link to cancel the move. Now, that sounds like a phishing scam, right? I and many commenters wondered that, looking at the original post, but less than a day later, Ubisoft's verified support account responded to the tweet, seemingly confirming the screenshotted email's legitimacy.
"You can avoid the account closure by logging into your account within the 30 days (since receiving the email pictured) and selecting the Cancel Account Closure link contained in the email," Ubisoft Support wrote. "We certainly do not want you to lose access to your games or account so if you have any difficulties logging in then please create a support case with us."
I was unable to find anything regarding account closure for inactivity in Ubisoft's US terms of use or its end user licence agreement, but the company does reserve the right to suspend or end services at any time. Ubisoft has a support page titled "Closure of inactive Ubisoft accounts." The page first describes instances where the service clashes with local data privacy laws, then reads: "We may also close long-term inactive accounts to maintain our database. You will be notified by email if we begin the process of closing your inactive account."
This page links to another dedicated to voluntarily closing one's Ubisoft account, and seems to operate by the same rules: a 30-day suspension before permanent deletion. "As we will be unable to recover the account once it has been closed, we strongly recommend only putting in the request if you are absolutely sure you would like to close your account."
"If you have a good spam filter or just reasonably assume it's a phishing attempt, then you might one day try your old games and find they're just gone," worries long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam. "If you're someone who still plays games from decades ago every so often, this is a scenario you might want to think about."
The site Eurogamer reports that when a Twitter user complained that "I lost my Ubisoft account, and all the Ubisoft Steam game[s] I've bought are now useless", Ubisoft Support "responded to say that players can raise a ticket if they would like to recover their account."
The original tweet now includes this "reader-added context" supplied by other Twitter users — along with three informative links: For added context, Ubisoft can be required under certain data protection laws, such as the GDPR, to close inactive accounts if they deem the data no longer necessary for collection.
Ubisoft has claimed they don't close accounts that are inactive for less than 4 years.
"You can avoid the account closure by logging into your account within the 30 days (since receiving the email pictured) and selecting the Cancel Account Closure link contained in the email," Ubisoft Support wrote. "We certainly do not want you to lose access to your games or account so if you have any difficulties logging in then please create a support case with us."
I was unable to find anything regarding account closure for inactivity in Ubisoft's US terms of use or its end user licence agreement, but the company does reserve the right to suspend or end services at any time. Ubisoft has a support page titled "Closure of inactive Ubisoft accounts." The page first describes instances where the service clashes with local data privacy laws, then reads: "We may also close long-term inactive accounts to maintain our database. You will be notified by email if we begin the process of closing your inactive account."
This page links to another dedicated to voluntarily closing one's Ubisoft account, and seems to operate by the same rules: a 30-day suspension before permanent deletion. "As we will be unable to recover the account once it has been closed, we strongly recommend only putting in the request if you are absolutely sure you would like to close your account."
"If you have a good spam filter or just reasonably assume it's a phishing attempt, then you might one day try your old games and find they're just gone," worries long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam. "If you're someone who still plays games from decades ago every so often, this is a scenario you might want to think about."
The site Eurogamer reports that when a Twitter user complained that "I lost my Ubisoft account, and all the Ubisoft Steam game[s] I've bought are now useless", Ubisoft Support "responded to say that players can raise a ticket if they would like to recover their account."
The original tweet now includes this "reader-added context" supplied by other Twitter users — along with three informative links: For added context, Ubisoft can be required under certain data protection laws, such as the GDPR, to close inactive accounts if they deem the data no longer necessary for collection.
Ubisoft has claimed they don't close accounts that are inactive for less than 4 years.
EGS (Score:5, Interesting)
Epic Game Store cancelled my account with over 100 games (hundreds of US dollars worth) three weeks ago without providing any reasons and they've refused to restore it despite my five attempts (emails) to do so. And to make matters worse, you cannot contact the company, there's nothing, no email, no phone number, nothing. There's an account recovery form on their website and that's it.
No is talking about that maybe because EGS does that sneakily without any announcements. Too bad I'm not a US citizen and I cannot sue them for terminating the account unilaterally without me breaching the EULA.
Re:EGS (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, while "hundreds" of dollars would quickly be swallowed by lawyer's fees, you can still sue. At the very least, the threat should have them pushing you into their "mediation" system.
That said, there's a lot that can be hidden in international stuff.
Also, it took me around a minute [epicgames.com] to find postal addresses: [epicgames.com]
Epic Games, Inc.
Legal Department
ATTN: NOTICE OF DISPUTE
Box 254
2474 Walnut Street
Cary, NC, 27518, U.S.A
(Privacy policy)
Attn: Legal Department
Epic Games, Inc.
620 Crossroads Blvd
Cary, NC 27518, USA
Re: (Score:3)
Under I *believe* European and definately Australian consumer laws, if the company removes your ability to play the game, you are entitled to have them refunded regardless of how long ago you purchased them under the lifetime warranty laws. This will obviously vary from place to place.
It may well be worth trying to work out how much they've taken and billing them. If they wont refund, then forward it all to your local consumer protection agency.
(I am not a lawyer, so dont go relying on this lol)
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Did you try the account recovery form? Seems like they're saying, "Here you go. This is exactly how to address this situation."
Illegal (Score:2)
How the fuck is this not illegal? Forcing customer interaction under threat of deleting all of customers shit? WTAF?!
What, is the few megabytes of data too much to hold now? Storage prices that bad?
Fuck these clowns.
If you spent money on their platform it is (Score:1)
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Since the price would probably be in Euros, most of this moot [grammar-monster.com].
I'm not even sure if the Napoleonic Code has a concept like "class action".
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So? Arbitrate then. Individually. The cost of thousands of arbitrations will fucking crush them. This story has already played out against Uber.
https://gizmodo.com/ubers-arbi... [gizmodo.com]
Never give up. Never surrender.
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Technically I have spent zero money there, but I do have a couple games on there from bundle deals when buying gpu's years ago.
I wonder if these geniuses understand what will happen to them, if there ever comes a time where we really "own nothing" and even then get fucked over by these raging-greed-machines, these people will suffer the same fate bad dictators do.
The rich want to take everything off the menu, but they can't remove themselves. The people will always be hungry. The math here is obvious.
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But are you going to hire a lawyer?
Why would I? I live in a country with consumer advocacy departments run by the government. I don't need to hire a lawyer, just fill out a form. Ubisoft is bigger than America (though I know the whole "rest of the world" thing may be a foreign concept to some people). Frankly what the Supreme Court says is completely irrelevant to most of Ubisoft's customers.
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Under American law, or under French law? Ubisoft being a French company according to Wiki.
Probably not the storage per se, but if a "game account" (never had one, don't know what you'd want one for) includes "personal data" under the definitions of the GPDRegulations (FR being in the EU, GPDR certainly applies, including the provisions about needing informed user consent before transmitting such
Data minimisation is all they need (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
One action ensures that generations of lawyers yet unconceived (American for "born", as far as the US PR department in Washington keeps telling us) grow fat, sucking on the lifeblood of consumers, and the other starves them unborn.
Of course, if you want more lawyers to survive to "maturity
Reviews are mandatory (Score:2)
Besides, as Ubisoft has offices worldwide, they need to align with many countries simultaneously from a regulator
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hmm damn, I thought they were Canadian all this time. The Quebec office sure is loud. lol.
Actually that's a good point, unfortunately. As I just logged into my account to 'refresh' it, I noticed there are a ton of log-in attempts on it from all over. India, USA, ruSSia, etc...
It's kind of more surprising that they are based in France. I thought they were all about worker/consumer rights etc? Now I see this is just them covering their asses at customer expense. Seems a bit double negative to me. Also not sur
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand where Americans get their ridiculous ideas about GDPR. You'd think they've been brainwashed like with health care being a communist plot to destroy mankind, along with pensions, weekends, and fire departments. Oh wait they got those last 3. They must be communists too!
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As I understand it, the majority of Americans get their information from media companies who have vested interests in selling the personal data of their "audience" as widely and as often as possible. In consequence, those media companies view any discussion of restricting such sales as being deeply inimical to their financial interests.
There was a recent US politician - the guy with the tangerine skin dye and the shit-gibbon attitude
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How the fuck is this not illegal? Forcing customer interaction under threat of deleting all of customers shit? WTAF?!
Well, it shreds over 100 years of contract law. You cannot remove a benefit to a contract at any time. That renders the contract illusory, and it did not work for Zappos when they tried it. You will win if you go to court, but it is not economically viable to do so, which is exactly what the company exploits.
If you steal a candy bar, the government will prosecute and punish you at govern
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Well we have separation of church and state. Now where is the separation of corporation and state? Otherwise, we seem to be fucked.
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Or maybe, a wealth cap of say...$100 million? Any circumvention = death. Not just death, but horrible, globally viewed, death.
Liquidate everyone and thing above the cap.
The actual issue (Score:5, Insightful)
The real lesson here is that you should never 'buy' a game that requires an account to be playable. That entire concept needs to die asap.
Re: (Score:2)
Some of that shit is retroactive - i.e. the game did not originally require one but does now because "launcher" was forced as an "update".
I apparently have an old Ubisoft account. They've been on my blacklist a long time for how shitty of a company they are along with Epic and some others. Looks like I'm gonna lose access to a single 8 year old game I haven't touched for that long and never finished. Oh well.
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same here. just checked my 11 year old account. it still exists, but i owned at least 3 games i had been gifted (for honor and the division 1 and 2) of which there is no trace anymore?
anyway, i uninstalled their launcher years ago because it was a toxic steaming pile of crap, and none of their games really justified having to put up with that. so they might delete my account as well, good riddance.
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This is why I only buy even Steam games when I can get them at bargain basement prices, and when I'm willing to lose the money. I'd still be pissed if they folded up and I lost access to the whole library, but I've only paid anything vaguely near full price for a few select games. For example Halo, buying that whole wad of games was a decent deal even if I only got to play them once and I've played through them all twice so far, some more than that. I have a huge library, but most of it is indie stuff from
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The steam folks (and Gavin himself) stated if they ever close down, they will unlock all of the games you purchased. Even if they didn't the cracked dll needed to keep them playable is easily findable
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That promise is meaningless. If they are about to sell then they can't do that. If they are about to go bankrupt then they can't do that. So... under what conditions is it going to happen? But nothing lasts forever. I just don't believe in that. So like I said, I have a library despite that, but the amount I'm willing to spend is limited by it. Most people don't seem to care, so they don't really have to care if I feel that way — the impact on their bottom line is small.
Goldberg Steam Emulator (Score:3)
Similar Promise (Score:2)
Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source. I'm not very happy with the draconian nature of (L)GPL, nor do I believe the other licenses have much merit other than to boost the egos of the original authors, so I might just possibly release it all as public domain.
--Notch, Creator of Minecraft, unPerssoned by Microsoft not long after buying Minecraft
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your collected game library can be shut off because you didn't use it enough
Ubisoft just made their Steam offerings worthless then. As Ubisoft requires their launcher (and associated account) as third party DRM. Ubisoft may as well put up a sign on every Steam page of theirs that says: "Ubisoft is going out of business. This game will soon be deactivated and rendered permanently unplayable for all users. Please do not purchase it."
I'd imagine Ubisoft will back-petal hard once the reality sets in for their shareholders.
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It came to life?
When?
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The real lesson here is that you should never 'buy' a game that requires an account to be playable.
How is this the lesson? If your account is closed, make another and keep using the game you bought.
I think what you were saying is the lesson is don't use an account to buy a game.
But really you don't live your life by an example of dealing with the worst shitbag you can think of. The true lesson is fuck Ubisoft don't give them your money. There are countless other companies which include both games which require an account to play, or companies which have accounts through which you can buy games that do no
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There are countless other companies which include both games which require an account to play, or companies which have accounts through which you can buy games that do not even remotely have this kind of douchbaggery going on.
And Ubisoft was once one of those companies that didn't do this. It's also hardly like Ubisoft is the only company [hackaday.com] to implement things in a way where consumers may lose access to copies of downloaded games that they paid for.
I can definitely see why some people prefer to look at it less as a question of whether they can trust any individual company and more as a question of why they should buy into a syst into a system where this is possible in the first place.
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And Ubisoft was once one of those companies that didn't do this.
Except this is Ubisoft we're talking about. If no companies did this and we had to take a guess who would, then that guess would be Ubisoft and EA. They should have been firmly on the do-not-support list a decade ago. Or are you happy with all the other long list of abuses they dish out to customers?
One simply needs to trend dickish moves. I don't trust either Ubisoft, EA, or Epic as far as I can throw them. The first two have a long documented history of being anti-consumer. The latter has a never ending s
Bad lesson (Score:2)
That's like saying that you shouldn't leave your house because you might get run over if you go outside.
The real lesson is that you should consider the value of the game on the assumption that you might lose it eventually. For gamers who buy games and play them and them move to other games, that's not a big issue. Losing access to a game has no real impact even if it feels bad. I imagine that most people don't go back to games they haven't played for several years.
Evolution of own nothing... (Score:2, Interesting)
Chip, chip, chip. We are just seeing the concept of "ownership" of a game get whittled away over time. First, it was DLC, then microtransactions (which completely ruined the mobile gaming market), then sacking of gameplay networks after a few years, then very aggressive permanent bans which are in Kafka territory. After that, a need to be on some subscription plan.
I wouldn't be surprised to see subscription plans become mandatory, and if someone unsubscribes, their games will just go poof, which means ev
AFAIK: Only inactive accounts with no purchases (Score:4, Interesting)
I got told they will only remove inactive accounts that has no purchases, ie if you bought something your account should be "safe".
Considering who we are talking about, "safe" can be quite relative. YMMV.
Re: (Score:2)
"You can avoid the account closure by logging into your account within the 30 days (since receiving the email pictured) and selecting the Cancel Account Closure link contained in the email," Ubisoft Support wrote. "We certainly do not want you to lose access to your games or account so if you have any difficulties logging in then please create a support case with us."
That sounds like accounts with purchases, unless it's only accounts with free games.
That has been going on for a while (Score:3)
I received that notice from Ubisoft back in January of 2021.
I didn't even bother to watch it sink under the waves a month later.
Question (Score:2)
When does UbiSoft decide that it has become Inactive and then make respectable and honorable attempts to Delete Itself ?
Asking for a friend ;-)
Lies (Score:2)
Nobody ever deletes anything.
I mean, you still won't be able to play your games, because taking things away is the whole point of DRM. But don't think for a second that all your data has been deleted, no matter what the company or even the law says.
Goody (Score:2)
Will not never buy a Ubisoft Game (Score:2)