IMO once you delist a game and shut down servers where people cannot play anymore then it should become open source and not protected IP.
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Open source is too far, but as part of a shutdown of a game and it's servers there should be a year long period where the publisher is required to release the game without DRM, including the server software, to all customers.
I could see it going through Steam, you get a message "Delistment notification: The Crew is being delisted, get your permanent copy now!"
Worse solution, but I would accept if publishers were forced to clearly display the exact date when the game will stop functioning at the point of purchase and all advertising materials.
Full refunds would be reasonable, if they wanted to protect their IP
Ubisoft has done a fantastic job of convincing me to never buy a Ubisoft game ever again.
Not sure that's how a company is supposed to work, but they sure seem to think so.
Here's a neat tip:
You can go to most publisher or developer pages on Steam and "ignore" them to prevent Steam from ever showing you their slop again.
Example:
- Go to: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Ubisoft
- Click the "Settings" cog.
- "Ignore this creator"
You can do the same with EA, 2K, etc. Don't even give these parasites microseconds of your time when they release their next slop title.
Unfortunately this doesn't seem to apply to publishers or developers that don't have a landing page
I purchased Rayman Legends on a big Steam sale because it is a great game and I wanted to play it again. I installed it. I hit play. It tried to install the Ubisoft launcher. I uninstalled it and refunded.
Fuck off, Ubisoft.
There's a great initiative going on right now trying to hold Ubisoft and other game publishers accountable for shitty practices like this by trying to petition governments from a few different nations to create legal protections for people to continue to have access to their games they purchased after the publisher decides to abandon a game. If you live in an EU country especially, you might be able to help sign a petition still: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
My dream is an "internet archive" for all video games, modded to run offline. If the game becomes unavailable for purchase, the archive opens that game and makes it available for all.
The next step is for this kind of release to become law, and supported by manufacturers.
Do this with books too. How much we've lost.
That sounds like a great plan for all types of media. We would better document our history and make so much human creativity accessible to those who cannot afford to indulge in what’s currently for sale.
Why do we not do this? Oh wait, it’s MONEY? Pfft, it will never happen.
Fully agree with it, but they're still extremely popular, and people will gladly keep handing over their money.
For me, I say "Ok" to them wanting us to get used to not owning our content - followed with "Then I'll pay rental prices. Which means I'm not buying at $60+ dollars, if all I get to do is rent it then I'll pay <$15 going forward."
Alternatively: 🏴☠️
Do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate! ☠
It's better than what Bungie did with Destiny 2... just gutted 1/2 the content from the game, including all the story missions and the first several paid expansions.
They wanted to attract new players with a smaller download size, but the new players come in and go "WTF is going on?"
Whoa, wtf? How did I miss that drama, haha holy shit. I definitely remember downloading it a few years ago and being aghast at its absurd size (think it was around 120GB? which nowadays that's pretty par for the course because fuck optimization). But gutting half your content just to save space... have they not heard of compression? Like what the hell were they thinking haha
They didn't just remove story missions and quests and things, they removed entire PLANETS from the game. It was crazy!
That's the most baffling MMO decision I've seen, tbh. WoW has plenty of issues but at least they aren't just deleting the continent of Northrend to save on install space or anything
Bungie's problem is they don't really want to make a story based looter shooter, they want a free to play PvP gacha engine.
It’s sad how consumers have zero rights when it comes to digital content. Companies can retroactively make changes, removing content legitimately bought by consumers with no repercussions. I get “not owning” but for a company to collect money for services provided and not actually provide those services will never not astound me.
And lots of gamers praise Microsoft for GamePass, because it’s cheap. When Microsoft’s goal with GamePass is the same as Ubisoft’s. Ms would love that you rent your games from them indefinitely. Wouldn’t surprise me that in 10-15 years you can’t buy the games made by Microsoft anymore only rent through GamePass and the subscription fee would be five times higher than now
I mean depending on your gaming style it might be cheaper.
If you play a game for a few hours and then buy the next new shiny 3A game then the game pass is cheaper.
If you buy one game and then send thousands of hours into it then obviously it is not cheap
The single most problematic thing where you should start to notice how bad gamepass can be is when you unsubscribe and decide to buy one of the games you've played only to have your savegames in gamepass gulag.
I legit haven't bought a game anywhere but steam in over a decade. I simply do not trust the motives or responsibility of any other publisher. And at this point, I'm too afraid of them yoinking their game after I've paid for it that I'll likely never change.
GOG is good too.
We all should be hitting GOG up more often if we want the legit ONLY good competition for steam to not die out one day. They are as good as steam in many ways.
Meanwhile someone somewhere is having issues with steam taking too much profit. Do note that even if a game is DELISTED from steam, you still can download the game on steam. Of course it is a different story with license revocation and that is a whole different can of worms. I don't even know if steam allows the publisher to revoke a license for a game that the player already paid for just because the game is not supported anymore (a different case with breaking ToS/EULA).
Ubisoft has been trash for a long time now. It’s a shame that they control some good IP, but the company’s too far gone to ever be trustworthy. Save your time and money and just play something else imo.
They're sure giving EA a run for their ~~money~~ universally despised revulsion...
I wish people were THAT passionate about REAL life/world problems/ injustices and make fun of the real people in power, who allow Ubisoft to do such things…
But they're not even that passionate about this. Shitty game companies continue to be rewarded by players.
I wish more people would buy stuff on GOG, although some games there still have some sort of DRM, Kalypso published games come to mind.
Still, way, way better in terms of ownership than what other platforms offer.
The really awful part is that there's not really any regulation that can stop this. If you ban taking away games people bought then they'll just switch to a subscription which is even worse
If you had reasonable copyright terms like 5 years and a requirement to release code/digital artifacts for library archival once it becomes public commons?
Except that’s not a problem in many countries so I don’t know why it has to be this way. US media ownership laws are among the worst in the world in that they are basically non-existent. It’s always been like this because we lack imagination and the companies are greedy as hell.
Like people act like this is a new problem with digital media, but it is actually the case with physical media too - there are all sorts of restrictions about what you can and can’t do with it. We basically don’t own anything media-wise, we never have. The difference is now they can enforce it more strategically and effectively with digital downloads.
Any company that tells you to 'get used' to something has massively overstepped the mark.
People you buy things from are not your boss.
Unless you are addicted to them, in which case they are.
i hate them because they remove anything that makes their games unique and make all their games have the same features until they're all completely interchangable gray sludge.
They just need to come out and “lease” the game.
“Buy” should no longer be on any selection as far as live service games go, or any game dependent on developer servers to operate.
Ubisoft of 2010 (ish) had some real great games. Shame they've become what they are now.
2010ish?
They've had some shoddy shit, but they also have some solid titles in their backlog. The Rayman series, P.O.D, Gex, Splinter Cell, the original Rainbow Six titles, Beyond Good and Evil.
I'll take my pills and go sit down now.
Man I was so sad when Ubisoft bought Blue Byte. I always held out hope that they'd switch publishers eventually but they never did and then they got bought. Now I know I'll always have to put up with Ubisoft bullshit to play Anno, one of my all time favourite franchises.
Right now? Brother, they've been on my shit list for over a decade.