Ubisoft Argues Players Don't Own Their Games in Wake of The Crew Lawsuit (techspot.com) 109
Ubisoft has triggered fresh debate over digital ownership by claiming in court that customers who purchased The Crew never truly owned the game. The legal battle began when California plaintiffs sued after Ubisoft deactivated servers for the 2014 racing title, rendering it unplayable beyond a restricted demo version.
Unlike most delisted games where previously purchased copies remain accessible, Ubisoft completely removed The Crew from customers' libraries. The plaintiffs, who bought physical copies years ago, contend that Ubisoft misled consumers and point to competitors who provided offline modes for end-of-life titles.
Ubisoft counters that packaging clearly stated purchases only granted temporary licenses. The case has expanded to include claims about in-game currency qualifying as gift certificates under California law and activation codes promised to work until 2099.
Unlike most delisted games where previously purchased copies remain accessible, Ubisoft completely removed The Crew from customers' libraries. The plaintiffs, who bought physical copies years ago, contend that Ubisoft misled consumers and point to competitors who provided offline modes for end-of-life titles.
Ubisoft counters that packaging clearly stated purchases only granted temporary licenses. The case has expanded to include claims about in-game currency qualifying as gift certificates under California law and activation codes promised to work until 2099.
You SOLD It To Me. (Score:4, Informative)
So now I own it. Period. End of discussion. I am walking away now.
Re: You SOLD It To Me. (Score:2)
Not how a regular sale works. Unless they have a DocuSign a contract or you are have a reseller license, the shit we pay money for has a certain set of default expectations. A warranty for purpose.
Re: You SOLD It To Me. (Score:5, Insightful)
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so what is the harm?
1) We could all learn about how crappy their code was?
2) There may be some liability implications? (IANAL) For example, if there was an egregious/negligent security gap that could be used to hack user systems.
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Re: You SOLD It To Me. (Score:2)
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Especially Ubisoft, Assassins Creeds are just reskins of the same game.
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Re: You SOLD It To Me. (Score:1)
I have never worked on a project where there wasn't at least some bad code. Large projects tend to be only as strong as the weakest developer, and as the project is patched and fixed, it gets more and more warts. I am honestly shocked that anything actually runs...
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Most software, particularly games would pull in a crap load of 3rd party and in-house libs and licenced assets so it would be nigh impossible to release the source code in a functional state.
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Re: You SOLD It To Me. (Score:5, Insightful)
The most obvious blocker is pretty straightforward.
The developers of a game themselves may have licensed all kinds of things to build the game that they can't just give away, even if they wanted to.
From the game engine to the art assets to the music to the voice acting to the trademarks on the name itself. The developer doesn't necessarily own any of it. They may even contracted out parts of their own game code subject to terms that preclude open sourcing it.
I do think there is some balance that can and should be found for abandoned/end-of-life games to allow for preservation and continuation, but I can see where open sourcing it is not simple - even when the original developer and publisher has completely gone out of business, and no one even knows who owns the rights.
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From the game engine to the art assets to the music to the voice acting to the trademarks on the name itself. The developer doesn't necessarily own
Their Copyright rights to control the work are exhausted in that 1 copy as soon as they authorized the creation of that copy. And the end user received it. That doesn't mean you are allowed to make and distribute more copies of the art assets.
But the author of the software can be required to distribute the code to anyone who owns a copy of the software who r
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And there's 10.000 or more rotting away in CD-ROMs or cheaped out 90's floppy disks that will cease to exist if not copied, to not mention all the web only stuffs that are basically erased from existence completely.
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You are able to "time shift" or "medium shift" your copy of the work by cloning it to a new physical CD there's already precedent for that being Fair Use.
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The software developer has expressed no further interest in commercialization of the software so what is the harm?
The harm is to the company, which wants you to buy their new thing and forget about the old thing, that you already paid for, that they're now making less/no money on.
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Re: You SOLD It To Me. (Score:2)
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Its a nice idea but it is 'to hard' when you start to think on it.
Like if Microsoft for example EOL's Windows 10, are they required to open Windows 10, even though Windows 11 is an active product and shares a lot of code?
For a game, suppose they release "Crew 2" its a completely different engine, etc. It shares only some assets and perhaps assets generated from master models and imagery, this time rendered out at higher detail than those included in the previous title. Do they still have to open Crew? What
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Like if Microsoft for example EOL's Windows 10, are they required to open Windows 10, even though Windows 11 is an active product and shares a lot of code?
Only if they shutdown the Windows 10 license activation servers or other systems necessary for Windows 10 users to keep running their Windows 10 software. In that case they should be required to publish sufficient code necessary for Windows 10 owners to build their own server system to keep the product fully functional with all materials and content th
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Even if they open sourced it, in all likelihood you still couldn't do anything useful with it because the frameworks or tools with which it was developed were commercial and/or no longer available.
For example, a metric shit-ton of smaller companies built games for multiple operating systems based on XNA Framework when that was a thing. MonoGame came along a few years later, an open source reimplementation of it, but AFAIK (from my experience about a decade ago) it never actually got around to implementing t
Re: You SOLD It To Me. (Score:2)
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> where's the harm?
You may want to read up on trade secrets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I have always argued that end-of-life software should have its' source code released BY LAW.
That’s a popular sentiment, but let’s not confuse moral indignation with legal entitlement. You’re not owed source code just because a product reached end-of-life. That’s not how copyright, licensing, or property law works—no matter how much nostalgia or frustration you’re feeling.
The software developer has expressed no further interest in commercialization of the software so what is the harm?
The harm is in pretending that a game is just some monolithic blob of code that a game company created to make a buck or two. Here's the reality: a game, especially an open world MMO like The
Re: You SOLD It To Me. (Score:2)
That's great, but you don't have the right to install that software to your machine without a license. You need the license to overcome the copyright holder's exclusive rights.
So, yeah, hang onto that disk all you want, sell it on EBay, turn it into art, whatever. But the code on the disk is protected.
In the same way if you purchase a device which is based on a patent, you can't just copy that device.
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Re: You SOLD It To Me. (Score:2)
You can operate the disc all you want. What you can't do is copy the code off the disc and onto your computer for pretty much any purpose other than unused backup.
You seem to think you're buying a game. You're not. You're buying a disc. A discs function (its "operation") is to hold data. You can hold data on that disc all you want.
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It's exactly how software works. You bought a licence. The licence grants you limited permission to install and play the game. This has always been the case even in the dim and distant past when most software didn't phone home or require activation to function.
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Then it's a case of misleading advertising or fraud, given most digital/physical stores don't use the term "buy license" or "rent", but "buy", to pretend you're acquiring something that will be of your possession.
And everyone that pressed the button was defrauded.
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As far i know you don't even buy the game truly, it's weird shady contract that exist since forever in the games, that before the internet was already a thing but couldn't be enforced in a practical way.
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This isn't unique to games. This is true of all software you pay money for. You are buying a license. Sometimes that license is forever. Sometimes that license is time based. Sometimes that license is in a physical form (which may or may not also happen to include a copy of software itself, but you still don't own it). Sometimes it is in a digital only form. You *are*, in fact, buying something. It's just not the software. I have understood this, without it needing to be explained, since before I could even
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A company should not be able to just break the product you bought because they feel like it. They should be legally obligated to allow their customers to continue to support the product on their own once the company is no longer willing to do so. Products should be designed with this "after life" in mind by law.
Literally not possible. Why in the fuck would we force a company with shitty product who is already losing money on the product to spend even more money on it? What about if the company goes out of business suddenly?
"I'm a customer and I'm always right and deserving of protection"
No. Customers are mostly fucking stupid and don't understand the fucking basics.
companies are all psychopaths that would put lead in baby formula if it saved them a penny
Capitalists do this, not all companies. Not all companies are run and operated by capitalists.
Re: You SOLD It To Me. (Score:3)
There was no end date in the Eula, so yes I did purchase a perpetual license.
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You bought a piece of plastic in a plastic case, and a license to run the software encoded on that plastic.
If you bought it digitally, then you bought a license.
That's what you bought. You still own all of that, even though the software doesn't actually work anymore.
That's why the law changes the terminology to say you weren't actually buying anything other than a license. You still have the license, it's just worthless because the software d
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With that said, judges tend to to be particularly sympathetic to the "You only have a license" things when it comes to resale and/or this kind of DRM bricking.
Sure you dont technically own it, however you acquired rights to it that aren't time limited or subject to it being arbitrarily cancelled without a refund. Even if its technically inferrable that way in the fineprint or worse in a later eula update. Thats because the contract isnt the text of the eula, the contract is the understood agreement of both
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Because Slashdots ancient rotting codebase is broken and doesn't have an edit button for some reason, by "tend to to be particularly sympathetic" you should read that as "tend NOT to be particularly sympathetic"
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Ubisoft will argue they didn't cancel the license -- you still have legal permission to run the software, but it just so happens that software you have no longer works because the servers it needs to talk to no longer exist, and they never promised to run them forever.
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So now I own it. Period. End of discussion. I am walking away now.
(Narrator) "And with that declaration, our mighty consumer inadvertently activated the Walk-the-Plank clause within the EULA, forcing the company to immediately dispatch The Crew to ensure his walk was quite short.."
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No you paid for something. That's not the same as being sold something. Read the fine print.
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Then they should stop calling it a sale, and stop talking about piracy equating to lost sales.
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They sold a license. That's a sale.
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Although I agree it is they way it should be, it is clearly not the way it works unless you buy it of Gog. It always bothered me how companies would advertise DVDs by saying own a copy. But clearly you didn't if I own something I can do anything I want with it, like take it overseas and play it, show it to who I want. None of those things applied. You where using it at there discretion, and probably somewhere in there terms and conditions it says they can change their terms and conditions.
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My cupboard is filled with MMOs and other multiplayer games which are dead as a doornail. Yeah I "own" the game disc but I can't compel the company that used to run the server to turn it back on. And yeah I own the media the game came on and I also own a licence to play the game, but subject to the terms and conditions of service. And in this case service has clearly elapsed and I expect the T&Cs are very explicit that players can take a hike when that happens.
Stop (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop. Buying. SaaS. Games.
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Stop. Buying. SaaS. Games.
That's not what the purchasers believed(*) they bought - after all it was a physical copy they took home (not just some login credentials).
Plus, according to the story, there's mentions of the (physical) packaging mentioning codes could be redeemed until 2099 - so there's clear misleading there about the availability if they've reneged on that over 50 years prior to that expiry timeframe.
(* of course, the corporate consumer-raping type over at Ubisoft will hide behind some legalese nobody but lawyers could
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What the hell were you doing with your PS4 that resulted in it being "hit by lightning"? Did the rain gods not want your PS4 sacrifice?
Re: Stop (Score:1)
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Re: Stop (Score:2)
Never Buy Any Software That Doesn't Run Without An Internet Connection.
(with some exceptions, of course - like antivirus software or software that inherently uses/depends on internet, like firewalls).
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Stop. Buying. SaaS. Games.
No. Sorry to be blunt, but SaaS games have their benefits too, and one of my favourite current titles is SaaS and if they deactivate it tomorrow, ... well I'll be sad but I've gotten over 300 hours of entertainment out of it in the past year so it will have been worth every cent.
The issue here is that people are saying they didn't know it was a SaaS game.
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but SaaS games have their benefits too
Yes, SaaS games are great for the companies that make them. I'm not seeing any benefits for the users, however.
for some reason I stopped buying new games (Score:5, Interesting)
Things like "this game depends on a server which has been deactivated" are why I stopped buying games a bit after 2000. Copy protection was bad enough, but if I had the original media I could reinstall. This, though...
Buying games was a waste of money. After a few bad experiences, I'll never again buy a game that can't be installed and played in an off-line system.
Re:for some reason I stopped buying new games (Score:5, Informative)
Thank goodness for GOG!
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1000X this - about the only way i'll buy a PC game these days.
Re: for some reason I stopped buying new games (Score:3)
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I'm not much of a gamer...but I still play Alpha Centauri and occasionally Civilization CTP. If I were a gamer I'd seriously check out GOG rather than just looking at it once in awhile, so your point is correct, as far as it goes, but it's incomplete. If I could find the games I want, I'd buy them and play them.
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I used to think like that, and then I realised what gaming is: Entertainment. There's literally hundreds of quality games released every year, I have neither the interest, nor the spare time to go and play old ones. Entertainment is fleeting. A couple of months ago when the PSN was down I couldn't play Helldivers. Know what happened? I played something else. If the game stops running going forward I will move on satisfied in knowing I was entertained for 10s or 100s of hours for the cost of dinner for two.
Re:for some reason I stopped buying new games (Score:4, Insightful)
Sidenote: I was cleaning out the attic last year and I found a whole lot of CDs. I *OWN* them. They don't depend on any server. I can't play any of them. Even if I were to jump through hoops installing dosbox to emulate an old system, my PC doesn't have a CD drive. So where does ownership get me? Just another thing I can't play.
You could order a USB DVD drive from Amazon for 10 bucks, if you had any interest in playing your old CDs.
Re: for some reason I stopped buying new games (Score:2)
Case study: Unreal Tournament GOTY. Released 1999/2000. Had a master server (needed for player matches over the Internet) operated by the authors, Epic Games, until the early 2020s, and the server was reasonably busy all this time. One fateful day, Epic had a fit, and decided to erase the game from existence; delisted it on Steam and GOG, and pulled the plug on the master server. The community knew how the master server operated, and quickly set up replacement servers. However, a newly installed copy of the
file an CC charge back. (Score:3, Interesting)
file an CC charge back.
Re:file an CC charge back. (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to think that CC charge backs are something that are blindly granted. They aren't. There's no basis for filing a charge back and it won't work, all it'll do it put a flag against your account with the card issuer reducing your change of actually getting a chargeback when you do need it.
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I have. The first step of a chargeback process is that the seller is contacted to give their side of the story. You absolutely need a valid reason, you can't charge back a perfectly normal valid transaction where the goods arrived or the service was provided as expected, the chargeback is rejected. And you sure as everloving fuck can't charge back a transaction you made a decade ago.
Also merchants don't hate credit cards. In fact the benefits of credit cards outweigh the downsides to the point that states a
Re: file an CC charge back. (Score:3)
Too late. Charge backs are time limited.
This is legally incorrect (Score:2)
F U Ubisoft. (Score:4, Informative)
I can't wait for Ubisoft to go bankrupt and all their people to get a fucking boot in the ass.
They're literally the cancer of gaming right up there with EA and Take2, now we can only hope those to also fall on their face.
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I can't wait for Ubisoft to go bankrupt and all their people to get a fucking boot in the ass.
They're literally the cancer of gaming right up there with EA and Take2, now we can only hope those to also fall on their face.
Indeed, Ubisoft told consumers to get used to not owning games, and now Ubisoft themselves also start to not owning their games (but rather Tencent does). And it's not unlikely there soon will be no longer an Ubisoft to own anything, when they so deservedly have gone bankrupt.
Please show me that termination clause (Score:2)
Re: Please show me that termination clause (Score:2)
It was on the outside of the physical box
"The Xbox and PlayStation packaging contain a clear and conspicuous noticeâ"in all capital lettersâ"that 'UBISOFT MAY CANCEL ACCESS TO ONE OR MORE SPECIFIC ONLINE FEATURES UPON A 30-DAY PRIOR NOTICE'," the filing states. "The PlayStation packaging's list of game features includes 'ONLINE PLAY (REQUIRED,' and again warns on the front of the package: 'ONLINE CONNECTION REQUIRED.' The Xbox package contains a similar warning that The Crew 'REQUIRES INTERNET.'
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Well... I still have Internet and am always online, so those warnings are meaningless.
The 'we can break parts of this game at any time' is the part that needs to be legislated into non-existence. Any time a company wants to turn off a required server for something they sold, they should be required to issue a free patch that migrates that functionality to the client, or release a free server that end users can run and a patch to allow clients to connect to it.
If they're done with it, and there's no more e
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While it sounds good in principle you will hit a lot of problems with IP law when doing so. The legislation bit I mean. There's effort and restrictions involved in creating something licensed for perpetual use. Any such laws will have a ton of loopholes as a result.
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Tell me, how do you patch the DVD for an old Xbox game?
If they're done with it, and there's no more economic value to them, this shouldn't be a big deal, right?
Who says the server code is even theirs to share?
It's a "social racing game", a single player mode would turn it into a crappy racing game with no plot and no one to race against.
Re: Please show me that termination clause (Score:2)
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No one takes "SPECIFIC ONLINE FEATURES" to mean the content for the whole game to work.
True, but you're also required to agree to the EULA when you first start the game or return it. Shrink-wrap contracts with return policies are a thing, and the EULA specifically says Ubisoft has the right to fuck your enjoyment at any time for any reason they see fit.
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The game is an online only game. There is no offline mode. It cannot function without the server.
Re: Please show me that termination clause (Score:2)
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Show you? It's literally in the first sentence of the the first clause:
1. GRANT OF LICENSE.
1.1 UBISOFT (or its licensors) grants You a non-exclusive, nontransferable, non-sublicensed, non-commercial and personal license to
install and/or use the Product (in whole or in part) and any Product (the
“License”), for such time until either You or UBISOFT terminates this EULA.
Section 2 is also quite a good read:
2. OWNERSHIP.
All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in... snip....
Excep
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Phuque 'em. (Score:1)
crapify your own ownership, toolio (Score:1)
I've been arguing that Ubisoft doesn't own their own games for decades. I've been proven right every time, too. By the standard they offer for ownership, they don't in fact own anything at all either! Which means they do all the saley stuff but they don't actually have the right to any money so you don't need to give them any, really.
You might actually own some stuff if you stopped trying to be crappy people all the time!
Quit Buying! (Score:2)
Seriously, if they want to be able to rug pull... fine! Quit buying their garbage. They'll wise up in a hurry.
And they wonder (Score:1)
And they wonder why so many people sail the high seas... DRM crap that keeps stuff from working. Deliberately breaking things. Stupid stuff that they just won't fix(*). This kind of thing. Fragmented streaming services. Region locks. Stuff released in a sorry state like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was.
(*) XBox for PC has been broken for a lot of people for literally years with some cryptic error message. Microsoft obviously doesn't give a shit.
That does not match EU law (Score:2)
Under EU law, unless it was made very clear to you that you are buying a _service_, you bought a product. And you own that product.
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Under EU law, unless it was made very clear to you that you are buying a _service_, you bought a product. And you own that product.
IANAL, but from what I can see from EU law it requires a product to be warrantied to work for 2 years generally, which would mean no game would be required to be playable after the initial two years. Beyond games, it highlights the whole problem with subscription/server based products where if the manufacturer decides to stop providing the services you are SOL. If I could find a product that allowed me to do home automation completely locally, integrating switches, plugs, lights, sensors into one unit I'd
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No. Those 2 years are for defects. Products with a hidden expiry date are illegal.
Game License vs. Game Owning (Score:1)
Honestly, that's where we live now. The console games you buy are game licenses, meaning you don't own them. You can't rent them, you can't resell them. If you owned a video game, it's covered by the US Code. Those, you can sell, rent, do whatever you want - you own them.
Video game companies who sell games as game licenses have to be able to prove why the game being sold needs to be a license - if a court finds them to be identical, as opposed to a real difference...the court is supposed to say it's game ow
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Nintendo did turn around and successfully sue them for including the game manuals, so Blockbuster then had to pull those/reproduce them.
The opposite of that. The problem was that they did reproduce the manuals, which they didn't have the right to copy. There would have been no problem with them including the manuals that came with their copies of the games. Well, aside from the problems that lead them to making photocopies in the first place...
I only see one way to fix this issue (Score:3)
It's going to require some very specific legislation, written by people with a complete technical understanding of the problem. IANAL but here's my framework:
Software licenses that require reoccurring payments must provide a substantial and useful ongoing online service to be considered a "subscription". Subscription software that uses online activation and license validation MUST create and maintain a "release update" to the software that removes the need for activation and licensing requests. This release update must be kept by an independent escrow service which makes it available to customers no later than three months after the online service is discontinued. Publishers of subscription software have NO obligation to provide maintenance or compatibility updates after the service is discontinued. Periodic software updates alone may be classified as a service.
Customers that fail to maintain their subscription may partially or completely lose the ability to use the software if and only if the primary purpose of the software was to access a subscription online service provided by the publisher. Software with significant functions other than accessing a subscription service may ONLY disable portions of the software access those online services.
There are a few core concepts here:
1. software licenses are granted in perpetuity, as long as neither party violates the terms of the license.
2. software whose primary purpose is to access an online service may be blocked from accessing the service if the user's subscription has expired
3. software whose primary purpose is to access an online service may NOT disable non-online functions of the software if the user's subscription has expired
4. publishers may not use technological means to prevent customers from exercising their license rights either by deliberate action or by ceasing to operate.
the purpose of these concepts is:
1. yes its a license, no you don't own the software, but publishers can't just terminate the license when they feel it's no longer in their best interest
2. if you're getting a service such as a stock ticker or a multiplayer game and quit paying for the subscription, you can get cut off from the service
3. even if you do quit paying for the subscription, any function of the software that doesn't require the online service must continue to function (you can continue to view your stock list without updates to the values, and can continue to play the single-player game)
4. publishers aren't allowed to design/operate their own activation / license check / service server in such a way that their decision to turn them off or cease business operations leads to a permanent disabling of non-service portions of the software
This would allow publishers to continue to run their operations without any significant changes in their operations OR commercial gains. It only changes the behavior and allowances when a publisher attempts to pull the rug out from under the customer, and prevents customers from losing value (but not services) as a direct result of the publisher ceasing operations. No reputable publisher would oppose these concepts - the only reason to fight any of this is if your intent is to deceive or defraud your customers.
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All of that makes sense, which is why I could see it happening in the EU, but not in the US or probably much of anywhere else.
On the other hand, are you also going to compel them to continue to provide downloads? Or does this also include giving up the right to restrict redistribution of the software?
It doesn't matter to UbiSoft really... (Score:2, Interesting)
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