Ubisoft Terminating ‘Inactive’ Accounts

[J4MESOX4D]

https://www.pcgamer.com/your-ubisoft-account-can-be-suspended-and-subsequently-permanently-deleted-for-inactivity-taking-your-games-library-with-it/

Maybe if they made a good game once in a while, users would actually have an incentive to use their diabolical services. This is a stark, dark reminder of the perils of digital ownership where your entire purchase history can be nuked because you haven’t logged in for X period or for other reasons without any notice whatsoever and this goes for other services too.

Valve surely cannot tolerate these absurd terms forced upon their users especially when it can impact titles bought through the Steam Store. Users may be left with dead licences and due to the archaic account linkage, it will give users an extended headache trying to untie a dead account linked to Steam if they wish for some reason to rebuy or purchase new Ubisoft titles on a new account going forward.

I’m grateful that Valve let’s sleeping accounts lie but things could change in time and terms could tighten. A good starting point would be to not let companies set dangerous precedents like Ubisoft are doing and Valve should step up and side with their community on this one especially against a company that came crawling back so shamefully because they need the business that Steam has.

[Muppet among Puppets]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Crazy Tiger:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Muppet among Puppets:

I explained why people react to it.
And you tell who else could do the same.

I expect people to react to it. You can not call something fearmongering, and in the next moment you say, its something normal because everyone can do it.

Except the people clinging to the "6 months" are fearmongering. It's been known since late 2021 that this boilerplate text was there. And I very much doubt I'm the only person with a Ubi account that is inactive for years now.

It also doesn't change that it's not a specific Ubi problem, but a licensing/service problem. If people have an issue with Ubi because they could potentially delete an account for potatos, those people should have the same concerns about Steam and other DRM launchers.

They sure have the concerns. Thats why they dont like ubisoft acting that way.
And calling that out.
It could be anyone doing it, getting called out.

[Crazy Tiger]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย muckymucks:

What's really funny about this story is that this has been Ubisoft's policy for years, it's written right in their policy pages but nobody, not even journalists, bothered to read them. It's only because of this tweet and suddenly it's bombshell news. Publishers can get away with murder if they really want to. Gamers are stupid and ignorant.

Exactly. Which is why I call it a boiler plate text, a service problem in general and fearmongering.

[Muppet among Puppets]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย muckymucks:

What's really funny about this story is that this has been Ubisoft's policy for years, it's written right in their policy pages but nobody, not even journalists, bothered to read them. It's only because of this tweet and suddenly it's bombshell news.

They even have a clause where just because they can assume the account will be inactive, they dont even need to warn before deletion. Found that now.

It doesnt matter how it became a news. Its worth talking about it.

[Muppet among Puppets]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Crazy Tiger:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย muckymucks:

What's really funny about this story is that this has been Ubisoft's policy for years, it's written right in their policy pages but nobody, not even journalists, bothered to read them. It's only because of this tweet and suddenly it's bombshell news. Publishers can get away with murder if they really want to. Gamers are stupid and ignorant.

Exactly. Which is why I call it a boiler plate text, a service problem in general and fearmongering.

What would you suggest people should do then?

[Crazy Tiger]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Muppet among Puppets:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Crazy Tiger:

Exactly. Which is why I call it a boiler plate text, a service problem in general and fearmongering.

What would you suggest people should do then?

Actually take action by going the consumer agency/lawyer route. Same advice as for the people who don't like Steam dropping support for older Windows versions, or people who don't like that Apple removes games from purchase histories and libraries when developers stop paying the yearly fee.

Such things won't change unless laws and regulations regarding digital content and licensing change.

[Cuchillo_Baishan]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย muckymucks:

What's really funny about this story is that this has been Ubisoft's policy for years, it's written right in their policy pages but nobody, not even journalists, bothered to read them. It's only because of this tweet and suddenly it's bombshell news. Publishers can get away with murder if they really want to. Gamers are stupid and ignorant.

Unfortunately, yes. Let's start carefully reading again the Valve policy pages, we may be surprised once or twice.

And if we don't find anything dodgy, doesn't matter: they can modify the policies next month if they want to.

[Muppet among Puppets]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Crazy Tiger:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Muppet among Puppets:

What would you suggest people should do then?

Actually take action by going the consumer agency/lawyer route. Same advice as for the people who don't like Steam dropping support for older Windows versions, or people who don't like that Apple removes games from purchase histories and libraries when developers stop paying the yearly fee.

Such things won't change unless laws and regulations regarding digital content and licensing change.

Awareness is the first step. It should come up. Thats why i dont understand replies about how "news" happening is anything but display of awareness and reaction.

[J4MESOX4D]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Muppet among Puppets:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย muckymucks:

What's really funny about this story is that this has been Ubisoft's policy for years, it's written right in their policy pages but nobody, not even journalists, bothered to read them. It's only because of this tweet and suddenly it's bombshell news.

They even have a clause where just because they can assume the account will be inactive, they dont even need to warn before deletion. Found that now.

It doesnt matter how it became a news. Its worth talking about it.

Absolutely. Not everyone has time to read ToS religiously and although I was loosely aware of these Ubi terms previous, I hadn't seen them enforced to what they are right now so it's good this has been brought to the fore especially now they are going hard on it. Some users are reporting they haven't signed into their account for over 2 years and had nothing done, and others who have been inactive for reasons have had their accounts deleted within a year. Someone on Reddit also said they had no contact with Ubisoft prior to deletion and they also had no received any correspondence of changes of terms sent by email either.

So there's basically no consistency with their terms and they haven't even given a sufficient reason as to why it is in place either and that's something they really need to justify. They also have no clear mechanism in place to remove dead Ubi licences on Steam accounts or how to go about removing the account linkage their end because 90% of the time they send users back to Steam Support and then Valve sends them to Ubi (correctly) and nothing gets adequately solved.

[Paratech2008]

I just logged in and out of both my accounts, is that activity?

IIRC I purchased 2 Far Cry games in the last year, but haven't installed either yet.

[wuddih]

Valve, at least for a while, dunno if they still do, did delete inactive accounts(2 years) if they had nothing of monetary value on them (wallet credit/paid sub - the latter means anything that is not a sub defined as type of "no cost" or condensed: f2p games)

as for poopysoft, not news to me, this is just resurfacing. i believe to have read that the inactivity period is 4 years.

on google, it is 2 years, which actually affected me once.

[Lithurge]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Muppet among Puppets:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Lithurge:

I wouldn't be surprised if this is driven in part by data retention laws. These require companies to delete personally identifiable info when no longer required. Requiring people to login confirms that relationship is still live.

If that was the real reason, the adequate action would be to ask if someone does NOT want the account to stay.
And you can bet if the company would lose money by doing anything else, they would choose this way too. With the same reasoning.

No it wouldn't because there's no positive action required on the users part to retain the account. They could easily say they didn't receive the email so Ubisoft retaining their info is in breach of the law.

[Yzal]

Ubisoft, EA, Activision and a few more are in an eternal race to prove they're the worst gaming company ever.

[Lithurge]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Paratech2008:

I just logged in and out of both my accounts, is that activity?

Yes.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Paratech2008:

I just logged in and out of both my accounts, is that activity?

IIRC I purchased 2 Far Cry games in the last year, but haven't installed either yet.

No, you must beat all your games at least 100 times to activate your no delete my account feature. I'm joking, yes all you have to do is login to account, and that it.

[Skeletor]

I don't believe Ubisoft deletes account after 6 months simply. They might delete the empty accounts with full of free to play games.