EA is a terrible company for gaming. Among their many shady and abhorrent practices, they re release the same game every year with minor to no changes: FIFA (now called something else).
The userbase that plays these games do not care. They are a sustained revenue source. A majority of them do not overlap with gaming and tech communities online. They simply play the games and move on. It's a large silent community that we don't often interact with.
Ubisoft has a similar userbase in its assassin's creed, far cry etc series. To them this won't be any cause for concern.
Please stop spreading disinformation. Aside from the usual graphical changes and annual roster updates you can see a list of major changes under each release.
>The userbase that plays these games do not care.
So what exactly is the problem if they're clearly meeting the expectations of their userbase?
I think there is an argument to be made that a game franchise known absolutely to see new, regular annual releases could be better served as a GAAS (Game As A Service) instead of as standalone releases that demand to be purchased each time.
Paradox Interactive recently did this for the Europa Universalis series, and honestly it's a good deal for new adopters. That being said, it's more expensive than a humble bundle sale (which happens often, at least annually). The EU4 game receives at least 2 DLCs as well as other music packs and sound packs a year, so it makes sense to get the subscription (which could still be more affordable for some people though).
Fifa 23 for PC came out for €60 and dropped to €40 in November 2022, and then jumped back and forth between those prices. That is €5 or ~€3.50 per month, paid annually, and you keep content if you stop subscribing. What would you expect a GaaS model to bring?
You mean EA Play? I’ve subscribed for a month or two at a time when I wanted to play some FIFA or another EA title. You certainly don’t need to purchase the standalone titles.
> The userbase that plays these games do not care. They are a sustained revenue source. A majority of them do not overlap with gaming and tech communities online. They simply play the games and move on. It's a large silent community that we don't often interact with.
What's with the need to use such an insulting tone, simply because you don't like a certain type of games?
I buy F1 every single year, and I'm an avid gamer and part of the tech community. The game doesn't require massive changes every year, there's simply no need for it. Improved graphics, and an up to date grid, cars, circuits and regulations is what I want from such a game.
It's not an insult to point out the obvious 'ignorance is bliss'. You can still like bargain bin fast food while admitting such food is garbage.
That's the thing happening with these companies, changing things to be more consumer-unfriendly while riding on nostalgia or branding. Pointing it out doesn't make it an insult to those still enjoying the game.
> It's not an insult to point out the obvious 'ignorance is bliss'. You can still like bargain bin fast food while admitting such food is garbage.
It does feel like an insult. And it also feels like an insult to say those players are ignorant. I'm fully aware of what I'm buying every year, but it meets my expectations of such game.
As a fellow F1 player, I do feel less comfortable buying these games at full price and that's why I don't buy them every year, even though of like the updated grid and tracks. I wish there was a cheaper upgrade option, since I'm clearly not buying a full game. Your point that it doesn't need a full overhaul is completely correct, but we are still paying full price.
I do agree with you on the price point. And sometimes I do feel like I'm overpaying just to have the game up to date. Obviously I don't know any of the financials behind making such a game, but I would imagine that licensing makes up a fairly large chunk of the price.
I know nothing about this one in particular but typical game license deals are something like 25% of revenue to the IP holder. A strong dev like EA may bump that down a little bit and a mega IP (Harry Potter, Marvel, etc) might bump it up, but it's not going to be super far off.
I'm a sports fan and I see it as an annual subscription model. They update rosters and make small tweaks, and if I don't care I can stick with the older games. I've seen Jetbrains use a model where you optionally subscribe for continued updates, and I've seen it in audio production software too.
Madden for PS5 is $70.00, or just under $6/mo. If you spend half as much time playing Madden as you do watching Netflix or Youtube, then it's not out of line with the average cost of entertainment.
There are good points to be made about whether EA are meeting their full potential on quality of updates though.
EA is a bunch of wanna be tech uncles in the bay area who are secretly wishing to fit in with the tech CEOs but don’t have the business model to do it.
See Unity (run by an ex EA CEO who spends a fortune on reputation management services wiping a certain lawsuit of the internet to the point obscure NY italian restaurants show up above his name in Google) wasting the opportunity to become the engine company in games and deliver solid value on ridiculous ads plays trying to become an ad tech company.
These are companies that could have solid business models and solid value. But greed.
EA is actually a parasite. It’s the Vampire Armand from Interview with the Vampire. It takes no risks, it doesn’t innovate because it doesn’t know how and want to - instead it buys already proven ideas, scales them with fat cheques and rides them until they are out of favor, while squeezing the people who build them year after year for 10% layoffs.
And thus it keeps itself alive, decade after decade and the people who run it a fat paycheck, the road littered with the husks of sucked dry studios and broken dreams.
One of many fun aspects: Many projects run on contingent workers who can only work for months out of a year (otherwise law would make them permanent), paid starbucks wages but without starbucks benefits. These workers are tunnels to EA with deals straight out of overpriced schools which approach young people with “100% placement rate” and “job guaranteed” in the hip game industry - tie them with insane student loans and then funnel them into EA.
EA then dangles them the idea that the best performers will be made permanent - appealing to youthful optimism bias - and many of them run 2-3 years with intermittent unemployment before realizing that almost nobody gets made permanent.
By then they are so deep in debt and unable to pay their loans, lack appreciable skills and stuck in a low end job that just hoping keeps them going or drives them to work at Starbucks for better benefits.
While I agree with the mechanics of what you're saying, there definitely is a subset of people who don't really play games, they play a game. There's a few big franchises this applies to, EA's various sports games, F1, Football Manager, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and I'm sure some others.
What I don't agree with here is that the users don't care. No one is capable of having such passionate opinions on a glorified spreadsheet than a Football Manager fan. Likewise CoD players - they dared to try something new with whichever one was largely based in space (I thought it was one of the best), and got eviscerated by their player base, who really just want to play Modern Warfare 2 again.
Wait what the heck. How is this shit even legal ? I have a few of Ubisoft games on steam and Ubisoft's official site. I used to feel bad when I was young and pirated because I didn't have money to buy video games. Now they are just justifying reasons to pirate. Which I definitely will start if the products I bought are taken away. This is an insane *Terms and conditions.
Because the games bought on steam just unlock the game inside Ubisoft Connect - steam is just a download manager at that point. You still technically own the product on Steam, Ubisoft can't change that - but since your associated Ubisoft account doesn't exist anymore the game won't launch. I'm not saying it's great, just explaining how it works behind the scenes.
Because the steam "version" is just an unlock inside Ubisoft Connect. The game isn't managed through steam internally(although steam does have the ability to download the game and its updates).
That's why I just don't buy their games. I really enjoyed Far Cry 3 and would really like to get the rest of the series, but just can't put up with their account system even at discounted prices.
Console copies don't rely on your Ubisoft account so no, it does not. You might lose progress in games where it's stored on Ubisoft servers though, like The Division.
The only game I still play from time to time is Rock Smith 2014 on a X-box I bought specifically for that. I wouldn’t even care to connect to any account if this wasn’t required to access the store.
There is two account required to access the whole game actually, one that is X-box/Microsoft account without with I guess the console is as useful as a brick, and one for Ubisoft which saves your progresses, give access to a few bonuses most notably the song Desolate Motion[1].
I don’t know where the record about acquired songs is supposed to be store, I would except it to be a Microsoft side handled stuff, but I remember that sometimes Ubisoft servers would be down and that would make bought tracks unavailable.
I had a look at Rocksmith+ but was utterly disappointed with the monthly subscription fee model they went with.
I started learning guitar during Covid and I purchased Rocksmith 2014 as a complement to Justin Sandercoe’s excellent series of courses.
I’m curious about why you bought an X-box specifically for Rocksmith. Does it perform better with an X-box than a PC?
I purchased the game from Steam and it runs fine – if a little hot – on a Windows 10 laptop. So far, the only problem I’ve had on the PC was note detection when playing open strings for the “String Skip Saloon” game.
>I’m curious about why you bought an X-box specifically for Rocksmith. Does it perform better with an X-box than a PC?
I doubt it, but I already didn’t have any Windows box to run it at home, and wanted something as dummy as possible to only play the game with any other distraction around. Would they buy a dedicated device, I would buy that if it just run and let me play.
Thanks for the response. My Linux laptop is about 15 years old but I was able to use the Dell XPS that I got when we had to work from home due to Covid.
Publishers want to make money. Game developer studios under contract with publishers only get a share of the revenue. That's why big publishers found their own or buy game dev studios to... <drum roll> make more money for themselves, and outcompete independent developers.
> I understand game developers want to make money but what is the logic here?
I think the logic here is that they don't want to get a huge fine from CNIL (French data regulator) and possibly other GDPR countries that choose to interpret the requirements in a similar way. There's a reason so many different services are rolling out inactive account deletion policies now.
What is personal about user `mikepavone22` owning FIFA 2019?
Or is this because they demand personal information for your account, such as your date of birth? Because they shouldn't be able to restrict your access to a service based upon them gathering your personal details.
Once the data are tied to email, IP address, SSN, eID, ID card or even a name, they are personal data. Sure, "owns FIFA 2019" is not sensitive data like "suffers from depression" or "voted Green" would be, but it's still data about a person.
Many people confuse identifiers with personal data. Next time, assume personal data means all columns of the "user" table and everything that can be sensibly joined to them. "Anonymized" means setting all non-synthetic identifiers to NULL. "Pseudonymized" means replacing all non-synthetic identifiers with generated ones. "Sufficiently" means you ask yourself: "Would I be plausibly able to identify rows related to this one person I personally know stuff about?"
But obviously, keeping user accounts to be able to provide them with their games is a given. No data protection agency would be able to convince a court that you should have made the games inaccessible without explicit instruction from the user. It's a textbook example of legitimate interest.
And because these are mega-corps run as money factories, the product of which is practically incidental. This is what it looks like when you have MBA/Growth specialists steering the ship based on "data". And the big table says "engagement numbers need to be higher". Then this makes perfect sense. What better way to boost all your numbers, incentivise activity, drop some permanently dead accounts (reducing the deonominator making first derivative numbers better), recoup purchases from returning accounts and pivot to the gold mine that is "not your games"/rentierism.
Might want to add Blizzard to that list. I used to own a copy of Warcraft 3, but Blizzard revoked all existing copies when they re-released WC3 as "Warcraft III: Reforged". I would have to purchase the game a second time to play it again.
I sometimes don’t have time to play games on steam for perhaps a decade or so (work, kids…), but I like to resume playing as time permits. Should I be worried I'll lose my account and games?
Not whom you reply to, and maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but yeah. My account is from Sep 2003, I have around 300 games there (mostly from Humble Bundles), by 2012-2013 I almost stopped playing. Then I had a phase where I put maybe 100h in Rocket League to play with friends back in 2017, then 2021 to play Outer Wilds[0].
That's pretty much it. I still want all of those games, thanks.
[0] Which so far I consider the best single-player gaming experience in history
I had a humble bundle subscription. There were a couple of times when I logged in, I found out I was unable to redeem certain games because I didnt do it before some deadline.
I recently re-logged in to my Steam account for the first time since 2014 and everything was just fine. I had no idea how to work anything but managed to play my old friend at Counterstrike. I sucked.
> Hey there. We just wanted to chime in that you can avoid the account closure by logging in to your account within the 30 days (since receiving the email pictured) and selecting the Cancel Account Closure link contained in the email. 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. >> ubisoft.com/help
Hey there. We just wanted to chime in that you can avoid class action lawsuits and regulatory investigations, by backpedaling.
You probably also want to fix whatever organizational dysfunction led to a video game company behaving like this, and talking like this.
I can't think of a single rationale for this. A user account isn't much more than a database entry. What possible reason could a company use to justify this?
Remember that EA had EA downloader around the time steam came around. However, their packaged goods division, who made most of the profit, saw it as infringing at their KPIs and someone pushed the inane idea it could make more money if it just allowed you to download the games you bought a fixed number of times to keep the project from getting killed.
I think that counts as “around”. steam took a while to materialize on everyone’s radar as more than an orange box installer and it took a while to get downloader off the ground
Maybe they updated their TOS to allow them to do something new with the users data (selling it, storing it in another region, etc) and they want to get rid of accounts that haven't accepted the change.
Its just a guess on my side what a possible rationale may be. Its equally likely that someone just put in a feature request for account expiry without really having a good reason and fully understanding the consequences.
> Maybe they updated their TOS to allow them to do something new with the users data (selling it, storing it in another region, etc) and they want to get rid of accounts that haven't accepted the change.
My Yahoo! Mail account is from about 2001 and I still select “I’ll do this later” when I sign in on a new device.
I think whatever new owner buys us next has to continue this.
Yahoo will also clear your entire account if you don't log in for a while.
Happened to me. Lost all my old emails from high school. Sure, that's on me for not having my own local backup, but they still did it with no warning that I ever saw.
Billing information = PII, so it is subject to privacy regulations. In many jurisdictions the law allows to store and process PII no longer than needed. If an account becomes inactive and all other retention deadlines expire, keeping the data may be a violation.
To be on the safe side and to satisfy users I would allow users in such cases to download the digitally signed account data and offer the possibility to upload it again.
This doesn't make any sense. This makes sense if the account is inactive and has no active licenses to it, but like, if you buy game X with whatever the industry-current licensing is, and the expectation is that you have a license as long as you have an account, termination is silly. You have an active agreement (i.e., the license) to use the product. That's a contractual/business relationship.
You could just as easily delete all of the PII in the account by sending someone an email saying "your licenses are now attached to these codes, please use them to reactivate your licenses with a new account if you want to access them" but they don't. They just delete them. There are many ways to square this circle.
If you can prove that there is a person with the access to the account and it was the intent of the buyer for this person to have access, then fine, account can be kept. The email notification they send is proving exactly that.
This proof is technically impossible and thus does not make sense as a solution. We are living in the world where zero trust is default and bad things happen, so the ONLY right way to protect customer data is to verify the identity regularly, rather than declaring it valid once and forever until proven otherwise.
We aren't living in this world, that's your imagination.
Rather than making the users suffer by default, identify a more specific "bad thing" and address only that with the min user inconvenience
You're wrong here, both legally and technically (and in my opinion, also ethically).
In the bluntest possible way, even if you were correct (and you're not...): They could have just deleted the billing information and not the account.
Ubisoft designed products that require an online account to use - Ubisoft is on the hook for providing that online access for account holders because they paid for that product. Alternatively - in any region with good consumer protection laws, they're about to issue a lot of full refunds.
A digital purchase is often the purchase of a license to download and execute the product. If that's the contract, then it is necessary to keep some PI on file in order to respect the terms of the contract: offer a download upon request to a particular person. No need to keep PI on file indefinitely: the purchaser is enabled to take their wares and the store to remove accounts if dealing with PI laws is too much hassle.
If this is too much hassle, they could instead sell a license to execute the software, regardless of how it is obtained (but offering a way to download for now, putting the purchaser in charge of backing up those files). Similar to what GOG are doing.
But no, that's not enough control for them either. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
Precisely. Storefronts want their cake and eat it too: they want to take control they have over the license from the user, but without the obligation of actually keeping it accessible forever to the user.
The GDPR has no rules around "activity", and lots of justifications available for "necessary to the business", in this case to continue to allow people to play the games they've paid for.
Only angle I can see that this might work for is reducing the number of people you have to email when you get breached.
Billing information isn't the same as game access, they can always delete the billing information and keep everything else. There's nowhere in the world that a list of owned games is considered as PII.
I'm almost certain this is the reason. A lawyer somewhere in the company has seen "PII retained indefinitely" and lost their shit over it without ever looking at the context around that. No doubt a bunch of people internally have been hammering them with "but this will look terrible when we remove people's access to products they bought".
Any lawyer even vaguely familar with GPDR wouldn't be worried about this. There is a text that states: "processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party.." and "processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject".
It could be easily argued that providing an end customer with access to digital products they bought is part of the service that data subjects signed up for, so retaining PII indefintely is 100% allowed (unless the data subject explicitly requets their account to be permanently deleted).
You are probably right. Most of my experience with corporate lawyers has been all about minimizing risk even if it means losing out on substantial business while there has been zero interest to find a solution. The root cause, as usual, is terrible incentive design where lawyers get punished when a legal problem occurs, but don't get rewarded when they consulted on finding a good solution that allowed the business to thrive.
If that's the case then it would be simpler to just put that as the reason accounts can be closed. It would shift the blame to some government and at least give an air of transparency to the whole thing.
I’m in Europe so I’m more familiar with GDPR than privacy regulations for other jurisdictions but it would be a gross abuse/misinterpretation of GDPR to use it as an excuse for closing down accounts of customers who have already paid for their games. GDPR does require data controllers to remove data subjects from their database but only if there is no legitimate reason to keep their account information.
Active account is a legitimate reason. Inactive account and no explicit consent to keep the data -> no evidence that customer still wants to keep the data -> no legitimate reason -> better be deleted.
As a child you may leave your toy in playground, return back in 1 hour and it may still be there. If you come back in 10 years it would be an unjustified expectation to find it there. As an adult you buy a property, abandon it and in 30-40 years it is no longer yours. Why in the digital world it should not be the same?
The answer is pretty obvious - because the digital world is fundamentally different, and you toy doesn't occupy any playground space, and also it's not publicly accessible, and you haven't paid for your toy to stay they, etc
Except I never abandoned my copy of Far Cry 4. A better analogy would be a book on a shelf. I may not complete a book I bought 10 years ago but I may revisit it anytime.
If you can't hold billing information just delete it.
If you can't keep first/last name, or birthday, just delete it.
However in pretty much every jurisdiction, keeping any kind of information FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE CUSTOMER is 100% allowed, encoded in the law, used as examples and is within the spirit of the law.
Any judge, lawyer or layman would laugh at the idea that GDPR can be used as an excuse to force users to re-buy products.
Nope. It's not really vague at all, and is quite clear in the law in several places.
You can keep data in your servers without consent if that data is there to serve the interests of user. In this case, the interest of the user is getting access to the games they purchased and paid for (!!!). This is called "legitimate interest".
A company can keep the address and phone of their customers if they're providing services that require address and phone. Package delivers don't even have to ask for consent to deliver a package to someone, for example. If you need email to guarantee that the user can access the games, it's fine to keep it. The law is not as stupid as Silicon Valley tries to paint it.
I'm pretty certain that Ubisoft is breaking GDPR and other similar laws in several places, but "keeping data to provide a service" is the one place they're not.
Given an inactive account that does not respond to emails and the risk of PII theft, what is the best interest of a customer? Now add the costs of maintaining such accounts, which did not accept the latest ToS, did not migrate to the latest version of software etc, what is the best interest of the business?
I do not think that the answer "keep the data" is obvious.
In real world nearly everything has an expiry date, beyond which product is no longer usable if you do not invest in maintenance. Who said that in digital world it should be different?
What is the expiration date of US constitution? Reasonable expectation for personal account of a human being would be maximum life expectancy of a human or notification of death of the user.
US constitution has already expired in my opinion as an external observer. ,) It is not a good example, anyway, because it is not a product and not something in possession.
Reasonable expectation of account life time is the period when the user needs it, no more and no less, and it is not the same period as the life of the user.
Privacy laws are not about the best interest of the business.
As pointed out above, you are allowed to keep all data necessary to provide your customer what they purchased.
Losing that data is not the customer's problem, but yours. If you cannot keep your customer data safe indefinitely, then maybe you should've settled on a business model that does not require keeping customer data indefinitely.
Passwords should be properly hashed. Heck, just delete the password and let the user ask for another if need be.
If there is ANY unnecessary data that was collected but that doesn’t need to be there, or that needs consent to be stored, just delete it. Easy peasy.
List of games owned? Email address? That doesn’t need consent, because it’s legitimate interest. It is 100% in the customer’s interest to have game ownership information long term, and deleting it would cause actual loss to the customer. That’s probably as bad as having PII leak!
And what's that “cost of maintaining accounts”? Less than a kb of data per customer, on average? Probably just a few database tables?
Once again, if there's unnecessary PII, just delete it.
This whole thing is just to force customers to re-purchase games.
> In real world nearly everything has an expiry date, beyond which product is no longer usable
That’s clearly not true. There are several products that don’t have it.
But in the case of games/software it is worse, because the expiration date is 100% artificial: since the games need authorization servers to run, the expiration is under control of the company.
> In many jurisdictions the law allows to store and process PII no longer than needed.
1. I think this is a misunderstanding of the GDPR. You are allowed to keep and process PII, as long as you have a justification. Keeping the user‘s purchases around would be such a justification, as would be consent.
2. Even if you were right, they could still keep your account and games around, and just delete the billing info.
Steam did something similar a while back. You had to log in and choose a new account name when they decided email addresses weren't suited as account names anymore, if you didn't your account got purged.
I can't remember any specifics I'm afraid, it was probably 10+ years ago. I remember being prompted to change it (either by mail or in the client), I never did and I never logged in either. The account is gone. Since it was that long ago I can't rule out simply misremembering.
Long term everyone is dead. If these companies continue to exist, how do they handle this? Will Valve maintain your steam login waiting hundreds of years for a user who will never login?
It’s an interesting question and it has never been directly addressed, though Facebook and similar have enabled memorial pages.
I could see a service like steam allowing a death certificate and closure resulting in a $10 refund so they don’t have to maintain the database entry.
Why not? It's not like they'll accumulate many billions of users in that timeframe, so the costs won't skyrocket or anything
Facebook is different on that an account can have a lot of data
Data for a million accounts takes up about as much space as maybe a single long YouTube video.
I mean, you can move inactive accounts to a separate table or something if you really want a small performance optimization. Delete them after 20 years. This is a very slow, very long-term problem.
The cost to maintain the database is actually a small part of it; a large question is reducing the "surface area" against attacks as best you can. Perhaps for steam this doesn't matter, but forums, etc have issues with old unused accounts being hacked and used for spam, etc.
You could lock the account and require a higher standard of proof of identity to recover it (e.g. you prove who you are and steam runs a credit report on you and validates your prior phone numbers and addresses against authorization and billing information that they have for the account--that would increase the barrier to require identity theft which is unlikely to be used just to take over steam accounts and spam).
If it's about dead people and true long-term, I still don't see the big technical issue, but why not give people 30 years or similar to prevent deletion? People backpacking in the Andes, in jail, in a coma or whatever would be able to respond.
> Long term everyone is dead. If these companies continue to exist, how do they handle this? Will Valve maintain your steam login waiting hundreds of years for a user who will never login?
A typical human lifespan is in the realm of ~80 years.
Maybe they just enable this "feature" only for ~80 year old accounts.
> we may immediately close inactive accounts to comply with local data protection legislation
I'm not sure if that's actually what their lawyers think, or if blaming GDPR is a convenient excuse. The fact that no other company seems to do this makes me think they know its BS.
Buying a movie from google for that certainty sounds pretty good huh. I wonder if the purchase might also dissuade any accidental deletions of a google account.
> Buying a movie from google for that certainty sounds pretty good huh. I wonder if the purchase might also dissuade any accidental deletions of a google account.
I feel like I must mention here: I anal. I am not a lawyer. That being said, Google accounts are complex. Here is what it says near the top of the page in the same link I posted:
> Google also reserves the right to delete data in a product if you are inactive in that product for at least two years. This is determined based on each product's inactivity policies.
My personal opinion is that Google isn't committing to deleting your Google mail data at exactly two years whether you bought a YouTube movie.
However, Google is also not committing to preserving / storing say your location history (for example) in perpetuity because you bought a YouTube movie.
Once again, this is just what I read.
I am not a lawyer, and definitely not a Google lawyer.
ToS of Ubisoft never explicitly mentions any account retention policy. Quoting Eurogamer:
> Interestingly, PC Gamer reports that it couldn't find mention of this in the company's US terms of use or its end-user licence agreement, however, it does reserve the right to suspend or end services at any time. It's also not clear how often you need to log into your Ubisoft account to prevent it getting tagged "inactive".
I've had my ubi account go inactive for multiple years, and still not been deleted (just checked) so I'm guessing this pro-piracy guy on twitter is lying about the reason for his account being deleted.
If you'd read the article, you'd know that the legitimacy of the tweet has been verified by Ubisoft. They apparently really do close accounts due to inactivity
The main "pro-piracy guy" in that case is Ubisoft, they are really putting in some work to make the legit way of playing games seem like a great way to get ripped off.
So far pirated games have: no login requirement or DRM troubles, no dependency on an online service, potentially better performance, and no risk of losing access. In other words, you can actually own the game that way.
Thats not much of a what-if: It would make sense to buy games and then download a cracked version instead of the official one, simply because the one you bought can be disabled & taken away at any moment. And, of course, cracked games have better linux compat because they dont have the DRM(s).
Buy it to support the franchise and get sequels, of course.
They could easily pseudonymize the data by removing payment info, personal info, etc. but keeping the games because why wouldnt you let people keep their games as a game company
Lets say they did this. They remove all personal info, including the email address for signing into the account. So technically the games are still attached to the account, but there is no way for you to sign in to it and there is no way for you to prove that you are the owner of the account.
It isn't any different from the user's perspective than just deleting the data.
I mean there is, you send out randomized credentials "please use these for your next login". And if someone lost access to their e-mail address, the proof of ownership would be the same as it is today (aka sending receipts, keys, etc.).
But lets really be honest: These kind of companies dont give two sh*ts about security leaks and GDPR infringements, as is demonstrated almost every other week by news. Privacy or legal compliance is most certainly not the reason they are doing this.
Well there's your problem, you never bought the thing. They use the language like 'buy' and 'sell', but in reality you're renting. This should be illegal IMO.
As an aside, the fact that Ubisoft try to get you to sign up for an online account from a console and will actively prevent you from playing a game if you don't (so long as you're connected to the internet) is too user hostile for me to begin with. I've basically stopped interacting with their games as a result.
Yeah I had that with Watchdogs Legion specifically on PS5 even to get to single player. I could bypass it but only by disconnecting from the internet in the system settings which is a pain. I'm surprised too but I guess Sony relies on these big third party publishers to such a degree that they let it slide.
I don’t generally play their games but I currently have a PSN+ Extra subscription which has access to a large portion of their library, so I’ve been playing all the games I’ve missed (far cry 5 and 6, AC Valhalla, watchdogs legion, ghost recon breakpoint). While they aren’t -bad- games, they all feel very similar and ultimately quite shallow and hollow. Certainly worth a few hours of fun each, but they started to feel stale pretty quickly, certainly not worth paying the normal price tag for, so you’re not missing all that much.
This looks like some regulatory induced certification bureaucraziness stunt that creates all sorts of funky stuff already within such megacorpos. Because time is money, the solution is usually the one they can take with the least resistance. Consequences down the line are an afterthought, and I'd bet someone mentioned that this would cause problems and it got waved away for not being important / other solution(s) being too expensive, this sort of thing, as usual.
They could be using GDPR as an excuse to do this. Or, to be more charitable, their legal people have been reading FUD about the GDPR rather than the actual regulations. GDPR has plenty of provision for legitimate interests, particularly in favour of the data subject: https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/legitimat...
Legitimate interest is the most fragile basis in GDPR and should not be relied upon, apart for server logs as suggested by recital 49. Contract (art. 6(1)b) may be better here, but keep in mind that art. 5(1)e still applies.
While I have to admit liking some Ubi Games in the past, namely Anno 2070 & 2205, Watch Dogs & AC: Unity I really hate what they do regarding to "Savegames". Me and my wife have some overlap in games we enjoy and lately it becomes more and more difficult to have separate playthroughs. We already use different windows users, but that's not enough, you have to disable "cloud saving" but it usually still "overwrites" other savegames. So usually I just let her finish the game and then completely restart for my playthrough.
Worst offender, though was "The Crew". There didn't seem to be a way to actually restart, or reset progress. And it wasn't even that I wnated to "share" the game with her. It was just me wanting to restart after a few hours, because I had the feeling I rushed/missed something in the beginning.
The way cloud saves seem to work on Steam is that there's some folder that is synchronized with the cloud after you close the game. If Ubisoft's thing works the same, then 1. start game 2. delete saves 3. kill game might work.
I usually find a way to do it. But with "The Crew" it was different. I think the problem is, that even the "Single Player Mode" is not really single player but some sort of online hybrid thing nobody asked for in a single player racing game.
One of the things that sets steam apart is family sharing, so you can share licenses with a spouse or sibling but keep your saves on your own profile. Uplay doesn't have that.
As these log-in-or-lose-it policies pass through the tech world I wish password managers could reliably log into all my accounts. Ostensibly the feature exists but I've found it unreliable.
this remind me, our university use google workspace for managing emails for all the student, I'm using the iOS mail app to consult and send emails,
but last year google increased the price (or) reduced the storage so the IT in the university removed the inactive account, they removed my account so when I went back to the university to fix the issue in the console it showed him I didn't connect for more than 2 years (yet I show him the then last week email that the IT department sent it which talk about the new storage limitation
Ubisoft seems to really want Empress to crack more games :P Meanwhile I even understand why some people send her quite a lot of money via crypto to crack a game instead of spending the money directly on the game.
>Meanwhile I even understand why some people send her quite a lot of money via crypto to crack a game instead of spending the money directly on the game.
To be fair, those people could be running an internet cafe and want to deploy the illegal copies to 100+ computers.
I went to the cupboard the other day to play some old board games with family and friends.
But we hadn’t played the games in quite a while so the board game company had sent someone around and destroyed them.
It’s fair enough too, I mean how can the game company be reasonably expected to not destroy what it sold me if I haven’t used it for a while? It’s on me.
So we had to find something else to do that afternoon.
My biggest problem with Ubisoft is that this is a company that owns the IP to some very storied AAA franchises(AC, Far Cry, Rainbow Six, Prince of Persia, fuck Might and Magic even), but the foreseeable future for these titles is that Ubisoft will milk the nostalgia as much as possible with gachalikes and unfinished 60 dollar games releasing in Beta with season passes and p2w.
If Blizzard deal goes through this would easily be the next company to be bought(extremely cheap valuation for premiere IP).
These are the same assholes that let you use a email containing a + in the email. e.g. name+shittyuplay@gmail.com, and
Automatically log you in after registration, so you can register and buy games.
Then dont allow you to login or use the support services later on because the email contains a +. So I get their emails, including eventually one about the cancellation, but still havent been able to login or use the support for my account. And if I post on the forums I just get the shitty advice that I need to login to support services or request a password reset because neither of those allow + in the email either. I also received what looks like a ban for using curse words in my support request at one point, and yes I did use <name>+shittyuplay so well thats true, but if thats the damned problem dont let me register it in the first place.
I dont care anymore since the game I registered was just some shitty thing that came with a graphics card, but I am astounded at how incompetent they can be while still trying to become more popular than steam. Steam only needed to provide better service than pirates, but Uplay needed better than steam, so well they are doomed and good riddance.
On most providers you don't need to make a new email address for that. For example, if you own example@gmail.com, you will receive emails sent to example+whatever@gmail.com.
Many people use emails of the form myemail+servicename@gmail.com in order to track spam. You don’t need to make a new email, anything after the + is simply ignored by gmail.
It’s very common, especially if your users are halfway technical which users of a games service surely are.
what is possible is not the same as what is regularly implemented. that same page suggests that !#$%&'*+-/=? should all be valid characters in an email
If you don't know the answer to this question, perhaps you are speaking on a subject you know little about and should refrain from stirring the pot until you understand a bit more. The information is out there, I'm not going to hold your hand through a cursory Google search.
after a more than cursory google search, I can find no evidence that in gmail you can use any character beyond "+" and extra "."s. do you have a source to contradict this?
I searched "slash in gmail address"
"google mail extra characters usage"
"ampersand in gmail"
"implemented characters in gmail"
and
"slash in gmail address"
not a single one provided any evidence of anything other than + and extra dots. parent commenter is talking out of his nether regions
I'm sorry, but when did I claim anything of the sort? This thread is about someone using a "+". This is the exact kind of goalpost-moving I expected of you. Just take your L and get off the internet for the day.
>commenter points to wikipedia page showing that + is a generally accepted standard
>I accept this but point to the page's other largely unimplemented characters, to show that email standards are not clearly defined, and it's not surprising there are services not implementing rarer characters like +
>you accidentally imply that all the characters I list are implemented
essentially because my comment was getting downvoted and people were disagreeing with me, you felt comfortable 1) starting off rudely ("this is such an awful take"), 2) overreaching from the established facts, and 3) being childish and accusatory when questioned
the way you act around people in positions of weakness is your real self
I will reply only one more time, because this is genuine flamebait.
> essentially because my comment was getting downvoted and people were disagreeing with me, you felt comfortable 1) starting off rudely ("this is such an awful take"), 2) overreaching from the established facts, and 3) being childish and accusatory when questioned
my criticism of your acting in bad faith has nothing to do with the fact that others did as well. Pointing that out was an attempt to allow you to understand that you may be incorrect.
as for overreaching or "being childish", that's unsubstantiated and imagined.
>you accidentally imply that all the characters I list are implemented
friend, I never did this, you simply misunderstood. You seem to have a problem with blaming others for your own mistakes.
If a naive developer doesn't adhere to this established standard, it doesn't suddenly make it not a standard; the developer is not following it. The standard is set by the mail providers.
> the way you act around people in positions of weakness is your real self
This is an absurd statement. If you are feeling persecuted in the comments section of a thread about email standards, you might need to unplug for a while. "people in positions of weakness" lol, this is Hacker News, no one cares about downvotes. Please just back off of this conversation, this isn't something you need to "win" or something. You're arguing in bad faith, plain and simple.
>repeatedly point to a wikipedia page and ignore any discussion of the actual contents of the page or how we define a standard, stamping your foot and saying "I’m right and it's so impossible I'm wrong that anyone with a different viewpoint must be lying"
overreaching? who knows? but sadly I think we can substantiate "childish". and let's be real, how can we describe repeated ad hominems and unfounded accusations in place of actual discussion? bad faith flamebait
>not to be the bearer of bad news, but this really feels like it's about 80% your fault. yeah okay it's shit that their sign up and log in use different standards, but why on earth were you trying to sign up with an email containing a plus?
For added security? For ad canary?
+tags have been normal way of handling email for multiple decades (probably longer, but I have used them for close to two decades now)
Before recently switching to iCloud email hiding I tagged every service I used with unique tag. This makes it harder for my credentials to be used in mass scans and I have caught few services selling (or leaking) emails to spammers since the spammers have contacted me with `+companyname` tag.
I don't see it as victim-blaming. if you turn up to a shop and the phone number you provide them with pointlessly includes 00 and the dial code, and they get confused and can't contact you, yeah it's incompetent by the shop, but also you've needlessly over-complicated and exposed yourself to risk. if you're gonna be putting money into something, just play it safe and don't try to be clever
I use pluses everywhere. It's a basic ASCII character. I've been doing this for 20 years. Google and other email registrars have expressly recommended it in the past as a method of automatic labeling.
If the registrars supports the email address, any online service which handles email also needs to follow this well-established standard.
OP wasn't asking for trouble. The truth is you have a misconception about what a "normal email" is. This is such a bizarre high horse to mount.
It's clear from your other comments that you prefer to be disingenuous and ask ignorant questions as opposed to actually advancing the discussion forward. No matter what I say, you will move your goalposts. Taking this further would be a waste of time.
no one ever advanced a discussion with a righteous diatribe criticising the questions they're being asked
if you don't want to define your terms or back up your claims with evidence, don't say them in the first place. don't start insulting people and demanding action from them when they ask for that evidence or want you to elaborate
Pointing out your ignorance and disingenuity is not a "righteous diatribe". If you are insulted over how people are responding to these frankly ridiculous comments of yours, that's your problem. No one is required to take you seriously.
you're being disingenuous in your use of the word disingenuous. disingenuous is when you say something you don't mean. I don't think that's what you think. I think you disagree strongly with my opinion. my opinion may well be wrong, but it would only be disingenuous if I didn't believe it
it is a less-commonly implemented feature of email addresses. whether it's possible or not, as shown in your link, is beside the point. as I illustrated, there are plenty of possible features of email that are not commonly implemented, and I've also linked to Hacker News posts of people complaining that the + sign is not implemented in enough websites. what more evidence do you need? it's very clearly not even remotely a universal standard, even as shown in the link you just listed:
nah, i really did meant disingenuous, but you are correct it is not my place to postulate on what you think or know. i apologize.
you are also correct that i do not agree with you opinion; it is a well established 'standard'
you're pointing out people complain that web forms don't support it but that is not an issue with the providers, just the implementation of those forms(or their backends)
221 comments
[ 62.1 ms ] story [ 4573 ms ] threadEA is a terrible company for gaming. Among their many shady and abhorrent practices, they re release the same game every year with minor to no changes: FIFA (now called something else).
The userbase that plays these games do not care. They are a sustained revenue source. A majority of them do not overlap with gaming and tech communities online. They simply play the games and move on. It's a large silent community that we don't often interact with.
Ubisoft has a similar userbase in its assassin's creed, far cry etc series. To them this won't be any cause for concern.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_(video_game_series)
Please stop spreading disinformation. Aside from the usual graphical changes and annual roster updates you can see a list of major changes under each release.
>The userbase that plays these games do not care.
So what exactly is the problem if they're clearly meeting the expectations of their userbase?
Food for thought.
That's just the Switch version (called Legacy)
https://www.ea.com/games/ea-sports-fc
What's with the need to use such an insulting tone, simply because you don't like a certain type of games?
I buy F1 every single year, and I'm an avid gamer and part of the tech community. The game doesn't require massive changes every year, there's simply no need for it. Improved graphics, and an up to date grid, cars, circuits and regulations is what I want from such a game.
That's the thing happening with these companies, changing things to be more consumer-unfriendly while riding on nostalgia or branding. Pointing it out doesn't make it an insult to those still enjoying the game.
It does feel like an insult. And it also feels like an insult to say those players are ignorant. I'm fully aware of what I'm buying every year, but it meets my expectations of such game.
> A majority of them do not overlap with gaming and tech communities online. [...] It's a large silent community that we don't often interact with.
Considering you, woutr_be, are indeed overlapping with this online tech community, aren't silent at all, and we're interacting with you right now,
why are you taking offense with a category of people you aren't part of?
Madden for PS5 is $70.00, or just under $6/mo. If you spend half as much time playing Madden as you do watching Netflix or Youtube, then it's not out of line with the average cost of entertainment.
There are good points to be made about whether EA are meeting their full potential on quality of updates though.
See Unity (run by an ex EA CEO who spends a fortune on reputation management services wiping a certain lawsuit of the internet to the point obscure NY italian restaurants show up above his name in Google) wasting the opportunity to become the engine company in games and deliver solid value on ridiculous ads plays trying to become an ad tech company.
These are companies that could have solid business models and solid value. But greed.
EA is actually a parasite. It’s the Vampire Armand from Interview with the Vampire. It takes no risks, it doesn’t innovate because it doesn’t know how and want to - instead it buys already proven ideas, scales them with fat cheques and rides them until they are out of favor, while squeezing the people who build them year after year for 10% layoffs.
And thus it keeps itself alive, decade after decade and the people who run it a fat paycheck, the road littered with the husks of sucked dry studios and broken dreams.
One of many fun aspects: Many projects run on contingent workers who can only work for months out of a year (otherwise law would make them permanent), paid starbucks wages but without starbucks benefits. These workers are tunnels to EA with deals straight out of overpriced schools which approach young people with “100% placement rate” and “job guaranteed” in the hip game industry - tie them with insane student loans and then funnel them into EA.
EA then dangles them the idea that the best performers will be made permanent - appealing to youthful optimism bias - and many of them run 2-3 years with intermittent unemployment before realizing that almost nobody gets made permanent.
By then they are so deep in debt and unable to pay their loans, lack appreciable skills and stuck in a low end job that just hoping keeps them going or drives them to work at Starbucks for better benefits.
It’s pure evil.
What I don't agree with here is that the users don't care. No one is capable of having such passionate opinions on a glorified spreadsheet than a Football Manager fan. Likewise CoD players - they dared to try something new with whichever one was largely based in space (I thought it was one of the best), and got eviscerated by their player base, who really just want to play Modern Warfare 2 again.
https://twitter.com/UbisoftSupport/status/168308086616607949...
Does that also include console copies I wonder?
I have blacklisted EA/Origin and Konami already, now Ubisoft is entering the list. Do not support money-milkers.
Console copies don't rely on your Ubisoft account so no, it does not. You might lose progress in games where it's stored on Ubisoft servers though, like The Division.
There is two account required to access the whole game actually, one that is X-box/Microsoft account without with I guess the console is as useful as a brick, and one for Ubisoft which saves your progresses, give access to a few bonuses most notably the song Desolate Motion[1].
I don’t know where the record about acquired songs is supposed to be store, I would except it to be a Microsoft side handled stuff, but I remember that sometimes Ubisoft servers would be down and that would make bought tracks unavailable.
I had a look at Rocksmith+ but was utterly disappointed with the monthly subscription fee model they went with.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZaAOaPaczU
I’m curious about why you bought an X-box specifically for Rocksmith. Does it perform better with an X-box than a PC?
I purchased the game from Steam and it runs fine – if a little hot – on a Windows 10 laptop. So far, the only problem I’ve had on the PC was note detection when playing open strings for the “String Skip Saloon” game.
I doubt it, but I already didn’t have any Windows box to run it at home, and wanted something as dummy as possible to only play the game with any other distraction around. Would they buy a dedicated device, I would buy that if it just run and let me play.
If we delete their accounts permanently, they are going to rebuy our games!!
I think the logic here is that they don't want to get a huge fine from CNIL (French data regulator) and possibly other GDPR countries that choose to interpret the requirements in a similar way. There's a reason so many different services are rolling out inactive account deletion policies now.
What is personal about user `mikepavone22` owning FIFA 2019?
Or is this because they demand personal information for your account, such as your date of birth? Because they shouldn't be able to restrict your access to a service based upon them gathering your personal details.
Many people confuse identifiers with personal data. Next time, assume personal data means all columns of the "user" table and everything that can be sensibly joined to them. "Anonymized" means setting all non-synthetic identifiers to NULL. "Pseudonymized" means replacing all non-synthetic identifiers with generated ones. "Sufficiently" means you ask yourself: "Would I be plausibly able to identify rows related to this one person I personally know stuff about?"
But obviously, keeping user accounts to be able to provide them with their games is a given. No data protection agency would be able to convince a court that you should have made the games inaccessible without explicit instruction from the user. It's a textbook example of legitimate interest.
I don't use these game services, but do they really mandate that you provide this?
And because these are mega-corps run as money factories, the product of which is practically incidental. This is what it looks like when you have MBA/Growth specialists steering the ship based on "data". And the big table says "engagement numbers need to be higher". Then this makes perfect sense. What better way to boost all your numbers, incentivise activity, drop some permanently dead accounts (reducing the deonominator making first derivative numbers better), recoup purchases from returning accounts and pivot to the gold mine that is "not your games"/rentierism.
That's pretty much it. I still want all of those games, thanks.
[0] Which so far I consider the best single-player gaming experience in history
If people reading this don't really "play games", make this the one you try.
The only use case for "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" memory erasing technology would be so you can play Outer Wilds for the first time again.
+1 for Outer Wilds
> Hey there. We just wanted to chime in that you can avoid the account closure by logging in to your account within the 30 days (since receiving the email pictured) and selecting the Cancel Account Closure link contained in the email. 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. >> ubisoft.com/help
Hey there. We just wanted to chime in that you can avoid class action lawsuits and regulatory investigations, by backpedaling.
You probably also want to fix whatever organizational dysfunction led to a video game company behaving like this, and talking like this.
Its just a guess on my side what a possible rationale may be. Its equally likely that someone just put in a feature request for account expiry without really having a good reason and fully understanding the consequences.
My Yahoo! Mail account is from about 2001 and I still select “I’ll do this later” when I sign in on a new device. I think whatever new owner buys us next has to continue this.
Happened to me. Lost all my old emails from high school. Sure, that's on me for not having my own local backup, but they still did it with no warning that I ever saw.
:(
I tried it out on an alternate Yahoo! email address that I don't need and sure enough I got this message
> Setting up your mailbox
> A fresh mailbox is being created, since the old one was inactive for more than 12 months.
https://i.imgur.com/VMHxeyH.png
thank you for the heads up
To be on the safe side and to satisfy users I would allow users in such cases to download the digitally signed account data and offer the possibility to upload it again.
You could just as easily delete all of the PII in the account by sending someone an email saying "your licenses are now attached to these codes, please use them to reactivate your licenses with a new account if you want to access them" but they don't. They just delete them. There are many ways to square this circle.
Only if you can prove that there is not a person with access to the account and intention to access it can the account be deleted.
You're wrong here, both legally and technically (and in my opinion, also ethically).
In the bluntest possible way, even if you were correct (and you're not...): They could have just deleted the billing information and not the account.
Ubisoft designed products that require an online account to use - Ubisoft is on the hook for providing that online access for account holders because they paid for that product. Alternatively - in any region with good consumer protection laws, they're about to issue a lot of full refunds.
If this is too much hassle, they could instead sell a license to execute the software, regardless of how it is obtained (but offering a way to download for now, putting the purchaser in charge of backing up those files). Similar to what GOG are doing.
But no, that's not enough control for them either. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
Only angle I can see that this might work for is reducing the number of people you have to email when you get breached.
It could be easily argued that providing an end customer with access to digital products they bought is part of the service that data subjects signed up for, so retaining PII indefintely is 100% allowed (unless the data subject explicitly requets their account to be permanently deleted).
[1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-6-gdpr/
As a child you may leave your toy in playground, return back in 1 hour and it may still be there. If you come back in 10 years it would be an unjustified expectation to find it there. As an adult you buy a property, abandon it and in 30-40 years it is no longer yours. Why in the digital world it should not be the same?
If you can't keep first/last name, or birthday, just delete it.
However in pretty much every jurisdiction, keeping any kind of information FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE CUSTOMER is 100% allowed, encoded in the law, used as examples and is within the spirit of the law.
Any judge, lawyer or layman would laugh at the idea that GDPR can be used as an excuse to force users to re-buy products.
„For the benefit of the customer“ is too vague justification for it, you need a more specific reason.
You can keep data in your servers without consent if that data is there to serve the interests of user. In this case, the interest of the user is getting access to the games they purchased and paid for (!!!). This is called "legitimate interest".
A company can keep the address and phone of their customers if they're providing services that require address and phone. Package delivers don't even have to ask for consent to deliver a package to someone, for example. If you need email to guarantee that the user can access the games, it's fine to keep it. The law is not as stupid as Silicon Valley tries to paint it.
I'm pretty certain that Ubisoft is breaking GDPR and other similar laws in several places, but "keeping data to provide a service" is the one place they're not.
In real world nearly everything has an expiry date, beyond which product is no longer usable if you do not invest in maintenance. Who said that in digital world it should be different?
Reasonable expectation of account life time is the period when the user needs it, no more and no less, and it is not the same period as the life of the user.
As pointed out above, you are allowed to keep all data necessary to provide your customer what they purchased. Losing that data is not the customer's problem, but yours. If you cannot keep your customer data safe indefinitely, then maybe you should've settled on a business model that does not require keeping customer data indefinitely.
Passwords should be properly hashed. Heck, just delete the password and let the user ask for another if need be.
If there is ANY unnecessary data that was collected but that doesn’t need to be there, or that needs consent to be stored, just delete it. Easy peasy.
List of games owned? Email address? That doesn’t need consent, because it’s legitimate interest. It is 100% in the customer’s interest to have game ownership information long term, and deleting it would cause actual loss to the customer. That’s probably as bad as having PII leak!
And what's that “cost of maintaining accounts”? Less than a kb of data per customer, on average? Probably just a few database tables?
Once again, if there's unnecessary PII, just delete it.
This whole thing is just to force customers to re-purchase games.
> In real world nearly everything has an expiry date, beyond which product is no longer usable
That’s clearly not true. There are several products that don’t have it.
But in the case of games/software it is worse, because the expiration date is 100% artificial: since the games need authorization servers to run, the expiration is under control of the company.
1. I think this is a misunderstanding of the GDPR. You are allowed to keep and process PII, as long as you have a justification. Keeping the user‘s purchases around would be such a justification, as would be consent. 2. Even if you were right, they could still keep your account and games around, and just delete the billing info.
I was never prompted to change that, even though I would definitely like to. I would appreciate any insights you might have.
Change the username? Sure. Change the email associated with the account? Yeah.
But if you've got a near 20 year old steam account, you're still logging in with whatever email address you had near 20 years ago.
I can: MAU
It’s an interesting question and it has never been directly addressed, though Facebook and similar have enabled memorial pages.
I could see a service like steam allowing a death certificate and closure resulting in a $10 refund so they don’t have to maintain the database entry.
I mean, you can move inactive accounts to a separate table or something if you really want a small performance optimization. Delete them after 20 years. This is a very slow, very long-term problem.
A typical human lifespan is in the realm of ~80 years.
Maybe they just enable this "feature" only for ~80 year old accounts.
> we may immediately close inactive accounts to comply with local data protection legislation
I'm not sure if that's actually what their lawyers think, or if blaming GDPR is a convenient excuse. The fact that no other company seems to do this makes me think they know its BS.
[1] https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/account/article/closure-o...
It's not just gaming companies. Twitter [1], Google [2], Instagram [3], Microsoft/XBOX [4] and more are all doing this.
[1] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/inactive-twit... [2] https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/updating-our-... [3] https://www.pagetraffic.com/blog/does-instagram-delete-inact... [4] https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/science/inactive-microsoft...
Microsoft apparently won't delete your account for inactivity if there are any purchases tied to the account: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/microsoft-account-...
> Exceptions to this policy
> A Google Account is considered active even if it has not been used within a 2-year period if one or more of these applies:
[…]
> Your Google Account has been used to purchase a digital item, for example, a book or movie.
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290?hl=en#zi...
I feel like I must mention here: I anal. I am not a lawyer. That being said, Google accounts are complex. Here is what it says near the top of the page in the same link I posted:
> Google also reserves the right to delete data in a product if you are inactive in that product for at least two years. This is determined based on each product's inactivity policies.
My personal opinion is that Google isn't committing to deleting your Google mail data at exactly two years whether you bought a YouTube movie. However, Google is also not committing to preserving / storing say your location history (for example) in perpetuity because you bought a YouTube movie.
Once again, this is just what I read. I am not a lawyer, and definitely not a Google lawyer.
> Interestingly, PC Gamer reports that it couldn't find mention of this in the company's US terms of use or its end-user licence agreement, however, it does reserve the right to suspend or end services at any time. It's also not clear how often you need to log into your Ubisoft account to prevent it getting tagged "inactive".
I think this is not a problem unique to Ubisoft, so I am skeptical of the usefulness of blaming this on them alone.
So far pirated games have: no login requirement or DRM troubles, no dependency on an online service, potentially better performance, and no risk of losing access. In other words, you can actually own the game that way.
Cloud-based games tied to ‘accounts’ are a scam.
Buy it to support the franchise and get sequels, of course.
Stroke of genius.
It isn't any different from the user's perspective than just deleting the data.
But lets really be honest: These kind of companies dont give two sh*ts about security leaks and GDPR infringements, as is demonstrated almost every other week by news. Privacy or legal compliance is most certainly not the reason they are doing this.
What's your email address?
I can't imagine a single reason how one party in the contract singlehandedly decides to change the nature of the contact
Well there's your problem, you never bought the thing. They use the language like 'buy' and 'sell', but in reality you're renting. This should be illegal IMO.
It's 2023. That ship has sailed long ago...
There is already a glut of other games to play so why bother.
Yours sincerely, Ubisoft
Worst offender, though was "The Crew". There didn't seem to be a way to actually restart, or reset progress. And it wasn't even that I wnated to "share" the game with her. It was just me wanting to restart after a few hours, because I had the feeling I rushed/missed something in the beginning.
but last year google increased the price (or) reduced the storage so the IT in the university removed the inactive account, they removed my account so when I went back to the university to fix the issue in the console it showed him I didn't connect for more than 2 years (yet I show him the then last week email that the IT department sent it which talk about the new storage limitation
I’m only asking because this seems pretty close to that line.
But we hadn’t played the games in quite a while so the board game company had sent someone around and destroyed them.
It’s fair enough too, I mean how can the game company be reasonably expected to not destroy what it sold me if I haven’t used it for a while? It’s on me.
So we had to find something else to do that afternoon.
If Blizzard deal goes through this would easily be the next company to be bought(extremely cheap valuation for premiere IP).
Then dont allow you to login or use the support services later on because the email contains a +. So I get their emails, including eventually one about the cancellation, but still havent been able to login or use the support for my account. And if I post on the forums I just get the shitty advice that I need to login to support services or request a password reset because neither of those allow + in the email either. I also received what looks like a ban for using curse words in my support request at one point, and yes I did use <name>+shittyuplay so well thats true, but if thats the damned problem dont let me register it in the first place.
I dont care anymore since the game I registered was just some shitty thing that came with a graphics card, but I am astounded at how incompetent they can be while still trying to become more popular than steam. Steam only needed to provide better service than pirates, but Uplay needed better than steam, so well they are doomed and good riddance.
It’s very common, especially if your users are halfway technical which users of a games service surely are.
Because it's a perfectly valid character in the local part[0] of the email address?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Local-part
are they in practice?
https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9282734?hl=en#:~:t... "Create variations of your email address"
not a single one provided any evidence of anything other than + and extra dots. parent commenter is talking out of his nether regions
>commenter points to wikipedia page showing that + is a generally accepted standard
>I accept this but point to the page's other largely unimplemented characters, to show that email standards are not clearly defined, and it's not surprising there are services not implementing rarer characters like +
>you accidentally imply that all the characters I list are implemented
>you also claim this is a "well-established standard" - something easily disprovable - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29319221 - so unsurprising you refuse to defend it
essentially because my comment was getting downvoted and people were disagreeing with me, you felt comfortable 1) starting off rudely ("this is such an awful take"), 2) overreaching from the established facts, and 3) being childish and accusatory when questioned
the way you act around people in positions of weakness is your real self
> essentially because my comment was getting downvoted and people were disagreeing with me, you felt comfortable 1) starting off rudely ("this is such an awful take"), 2) overreaching from the established facts, and 3) being childish and accusatory when questioned
my criticism of your acting in bad faith has nothing to do with the fact that others did as well. Pointing that out was an attempt to allow you to understand that you may be incorrect.
as for overreaching or "being childish", that's unsubstantiated and imagined.
>you accidentally imply that all the characters I list are implemented
friend, I never did this, you simply misunderstood. You seem to have a problem with blaming others for your own mistakes.
>you also claim this is a "well-established standard" - something easily disprovable - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29319221 - so unsurprising you refuse to defend it
This is the definition of cherry-picking. The standard was established by several mail providers and is codified all over the web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Local-part
If a naive developer doesn't adhere to this established standard, it doesn't suddenly make it not a standard; the developer is not following it. The standard is set by the mail providers.
> the way you act around people in positions of weakness is your real self
This is an absurd statement. If you are feeling persecuted in the comments section of a thread about email standards, you might need to unplug for a while. "people in positions of weakness" lol, this is Hacker News, no one cares about downvotes. Please just back off of this conversation, this isn't something you need to "win" or something. You're arguing in bad faith, plain and simple.
overreaching? who knows? but sadly I think we can substantiate "childish". and let's be real, how can we describe repeated ad hominems and unfounded accusations in place of actual discussion? bad faith flamebait
https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-mo...
For added security? For ad canary?
+tags have been normal way of handling email for multiple decades (probably longer, but I have used them for close to two decades now)
Before recently switching to iCloud email hiding I tagged every service I used with unique tag. This makes it harder for my credentials to be used in mass scans and I have caught few services selling (or leaking) emails to spammers since the spammers have contacted me with `+companyname` tag.
2. blame the user for the effects the system's faults cause
3. provide a possible workaround
6/10 not terrible, i'd drop the victim blaming though
I use pluses everywhere. It's a basic ASCII character. I've been doing this for 20 years. Google and other email registrars have expressly recommended it in the past as a method of automatic labeling.
If the registrars supports the email address, any online service which handles email also needs to follow this well-established standard.
OP wasn't asking for trouble. The truth is you have a misconception about what a "normal email" is. This is such a bizarre high horse to mount.
if you don't want to define your terms or back up your claims with evidence, don't say them in the first place. don't start insulting people and demanding action from them when they ask for that evidence or want you to elaborate
stay advancing the discussion my friend. keep accusing anyone you disagree with of being ignorant and disingenuous, that's healthy for the debate
to show just how disingenuous you're being here is the current wikipedia section on sub-addressing: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Email_address&old...
it is a less-commonly implemented feature of email addresses. whether it's possible or not, as shown in your link, is beside the point. as I illustrated, there are plenty of possible features of email that are not commonly implemented, and I've also linked to Hacker News posts of people complaining that the + sign is not implemented in enough websites. what more evidence do you need? it's very clearly not even remotely a universal standard, even as shown in the link you just listed:
>Some mail services support
you are also correct that i do not agree with you opinion; it is a well established 'standard'
you're pointing out people complain that web forms don't support it but that is not an issue with the providers, just the implementation of those forms(or their backends)
- Gabe Newell