Ubisoft And The Decline Of Games
Do you own your videogames? The obvious answer to that must surely be yes—they’re yours after all, right? Well someone might need to tell Ubisoft that. The latest news from the frontline is that Ubisoft is deactivating accounts held with them if said account have been deemed ‘inactive’. The parameters surrounding derelict status that Ubi is branding some accounts with are not entirely clear. After some indeterminate period of non-use Ubisoft will issue an email to whatever email-address is linked to the Ubisoft account in question, informing the owner that they have 30 days to respond to the email’s instructions or their account with Ubisoft will be closed.
If you Ubisoft account is closed what happens? You lose all your games tied to that account.
Do you receive a refund for the money you spent for those games you can no longer play? No.
But did you really lose those games? Well, no. You didn’t own them to begin with. As I have written before, such is the state of ‘modern gaming’ that you spend your money on digital purchases, usually, not for a copy of the game in question, but for a licence to play it. Ignoring the silly idea that you need a licence to play a videogame—the fact is Ubisoft isn’t alone in this. IF you hold an account with Steam – the largest provider of digital games – and Value decides to close your Steam account (for whatever reason they decide to), you will lose access to all those games you’ve spent money on. And short of a legal battle to challenge it, (something that has yet to happen far as I know) you have not recourse to get those games back.
Just one more wonder of modern gaming I suppose.
Playing videogames, writing about videogames, considering videogames—that about sums it up. Videogames are the one hobby that I’ve kept since I was only little, zapping ducks on the NES or knocking out MR. X. And when I’m not enjoying classics from the bit generation of games or checking out those earliest of polygons, I’ probably playing something from today’s age of modern gaming: if I’m not complaining about it.
Something I’m doing at the moment? Being impress by Project Firestart.
