Ubisoft insist you don't own your games when you buy them. How is that not a moral gray area but piracy is?

Is piracy "wrong" if you can't own what you buy anyways?

  • Yes

    Votes: 33 17.6%

  • No

    Votes: 109 58.0%

  • Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag was a good game.

    Votes: 46 24.5%
  • Total voters
    188
DryvBy

DryvBy

Member
Context: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/ubiso...imes-before-you-dont-actually-own-your-games/

WARNING: THIS IS NOT A THREAD TO PROMOTE PIRACY. THIS IS NOT TO DISCUSS HOW TO GET PIRATED GAMES OR ANYTHING.

This isn't a new discussion. We've heard for years that buying digital games is basically like buying an NFT: you own a license to access the thing you paid money for. If you want to backup a copy of your game, too bad, it's not really your game. You have limited permission to use your game, meaning that if they wanted to strip you of the game, that's what you signed up for. I haven't touched a pirated copy of a video game since the very early 2000s and I buy a lot of games. But I also don't feel like piracy is the exact same as stealing since you can't own anything either. In fact, I find the fact I can buy something and they can strip me of it more inline with stealing than piracy. Piracy can lead to sells, and often did for me. But stripping people of a game they paid for, or access to it? That's horribly more immoral imo.

When I was first gaming in the early 90s, if you would have told all the people buying software that they didn't actually own anything but a limited license that can be revoked at any moment, gaming specifically would have collapsed. Now too many people have just accepted it.

I also have a huge issue that they sell us ports of games (and movies). If I buy a license for a multiplatform game, say Metal Gear Solid, then why do I need to buy it per platform? Why don't I own the license to play the game anywhere I want?

I have the same beef with digital movies. If I buy a license for a movie, what does that have to do with format? If I own a license for a movie, why do I need to pay for a 4K upgrade? I own the license for the movie, give me the upgrade for free since I don't own the movie but a license to watch a movie.

What's your thoughts on this GAF?
 
I don't think anyone argues it's not a moral grey area.


The argument is whether what Ubisoft is doing is a legal grey area. Which it's definitely not. And piracy is definitely illegal.
 
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DryvBy said:
I have the same beef with digital movies. If I buy a license for a movie, what does that have to do with format? If I own a license for a movie, why do I need to pay for a 4K upgrade? I own the license for the movie, give me the upgrade for free since I don't own the movie but a license to watch a movie.
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Playing the devil's advocate here, you have a license for 'that' iteration of the movie. When it's gotten a 4K upgrade, it's essentially a new, replaced, item now. Your original license entitles you to the original product.
 
I have absolutely no moral qualms with piracy of ubisoft games and their equivalent corpos. I buy games from them (when I do) for convenience and/or cohesion of my library, nothing else.
 
DryvBy said:
I have the same beef with digital movies. If I buy a license for a movie, what does that have to do with format? If I own a license for a movie, why do I need to pay for a 4K upgrade? I own the license for the movie, give me the upgrade for free since I don't own the movie but a license to watch a movie.
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adamsapple said:
Playing the devil's advocate here, you have a license for 'that' iteration of the movie. When it's gotten a 4K upgrade, it's essentially a new, replaced, item now. Your original license entitles you to the original product.
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If you want free 4K upgrades, you should be buying your digital films through Apple. Best quality as well.
 
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I thought this was common knowledge that you're only getting a license now & stuff like this is the reason a lot of people don't want a digital future.

A easy fix would be to move the license & some content from the dead game over to the new game & let people play a limited version of the new game using the license.
 
They can say whatever they want and make whatever claim they want. I remember EULAs popping up in the 1990s, they are probably older than that, but I also remember that companies did ANYTHING possible to make sure this legal theory did not end up in front of a judge. They did not want this tested. So it's interesting to see Ubisoft advancing this theory in a court case. If I was Ubisoft I would probably just pay off The Crew people and settle this, but evidently they think that they will prevail and this idea will be approved by case law.
 
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Quite happy not buying any more Ubsislop products and haven't done so for a good while now, And I honestly don't think I've missed out on much or will do.
 
Wrong is still wrong regardless of the wrongs that other people bring on to you.

"I wasn't going to buy it anyway" is the excited utterance of a grinning fool caught in the act of theft, and not an excuse.

I don't actually care because a lot more people pretend they pirate than actually do it and PC gets shittier and later ports(that are often never fixed) because of it so that is nice too., and it leaves room for the consoles to compete.

However, were this ever to become a major problem, I suspect with a tidal wave of money it could be stemmed and that would ruin it for everyone, so hopefully it stays insignificant. If everyone does it they will be sure to make it so no one can.
 
Doesn't much matter as games head towards more and more of online only titles, piracy and ownership will both be near impossible. Unless people start boycotting online only titles, ownership will be dead in the near future.
 
KyoZz said:
Black Flag was a (very) good game, just not a good Assassin's Creed.
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Understand Schitts Creek GIF by CBC
 
To me, it immediately lower the value of the product. It's basically saying that sooner or later, you won't be able to plug in your console and insert a ready to play cartridge or CD, just like during the 6th generation and the previous.

Now the worst case has to be steam. People are building incredibly big digital collection, pouring money into something not tangible.

Once upon a time, our beloved video games also came with a booklet and sometime a map which you could touch, smell, let your imagination go wild reading and looking at the hand drawn arts, item and character list etc.. The game still in its box, the experience already had started in your mind.
 
So companies should spend a half billion dollars and give away games for free if they don't allow you to do anything you want with the title?
 
you own a licence to play a game, you dont own the game, the software, the code, the assets. When the licence comes in the shape of a disc is clearer. You can then resell said disc, you lose the licence to play that game.
Its like a ticket for a music concert, the ticket gives you the access to said concert, but you dont own the band or the rights to record that concert and sell it.

the problem comes with digital licences, that, in my opinion, should be cheaper if you cant resell them. Also, the problem might arise if they take it away from you and NOT reimburse them. Sony took the right of everyone to play concord, but they gave the money back.
 
It's their product. They can choose how to sell access to it . If you don't like their method or you don't think the price is justified you are absolutely entitled to just not buy it and not engage with it, but that doesn't entitle you to get a free pirated copy of it.

Personally, this is one of the reasons why I think most games aren't worth $70 (or $80 now I guess), digital ones in particular. But I also don't have any problem waiting for them to go on sale to a price I'm willing to pay for a limited digital license (usually $40 or less)
 
Hari Seldon said:
I mean you can't steal a rental car.
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DonF said:
you own a licence to play a game, you dont own the game, the software, the code, the assets. When the licence comes in the shape of a disc is clearer. You can then resell said disc, you lose the licence to play that game.
Its like a ticket for a music concert, the ticket gives you the access to said concert, but you dont own the band or the rights to record that concert and sell it.

the problem comes with digital licences, that, in my opinion, should be cheaper if you cant resell them. Also, the problem might arise if they take it away from you and NOT reimburse them. Sony took the right of everyone to play concord, but they gave the money back.
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All of this. You don't own any media you purchase. Video game, movie, CD - the only thing you "own" is a plastic disc or cartridge. That disc contains a licensed reproduction of the original media.

Fortunately, courts have rules that you are allowed to make "backups" of the contents of that media, but you are only allowed to use those backups as long as you still possess the original disc.

FWIW, I make the argument that digitally licensed content has proven over the last 20 years to be superior to physical formats as a means of preservation and accessibility:

Disc rot is starting to affect 6th gen consoles. Batteries in GBC/GBA games are dying making it impossible to save, replacements are not easy (have to de-solder them). Games trapped on older systems that have never been ported: The BR drive in my PS3 is toast, I can't play my copy of MGS4. But if I bought the digital version on PSN it would be still downloadable and playable. I can play all the games I purchased digitally on PS4 on my PS5 DE, but a physical library of PS4 discs is useless. All the PC games I own on a disc are useless, PCs don't have drives anymore and even if you bought an external, the disc check/activation mechanisms are either offline or don't function properly under modern OS. Steam has helped preserve access to my game collection in a far more functional and accessible way than any physical media has.

Lastly, despite all the fear-mongering about it, I have never heard of someone's digitally licensed content being no longer downloadable without being refunded. Yes, shops have gone offline and content has been delisted, but all that stuff (eShop, 360 marketplace, ps3/vita stores) is still downloadable today.

All that said, IMO Ubisoft's 'just subscribe and play' is an entirely different model. It's Netflix. No one is crying that they don't "own" Bridgerton or Chef's Table.
 
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it was a gray area in 2004. If you aren't aware of this by now, I don't know what to tell you. I don't like it same as anyone else, but all of these companies have this shit outlined in their respective licensing agreements. This is a war that was lost a long, long time ago, and it isn't going to change. Accept it or find a new hobby, but stop acting like this is new for games - or literally any other piece of entertainment media you are "buying" digitally.
 
Cross buy is what Microsoft is doing.

I bet publishers could get behind an universal license if they didn't have to play platform holders for it.

Platform holders have zero motivation to facilitate universal licenses.

Discs rot, cartridges break.... It's always been a fleeting ownership. It always has been like that, it doesn't make sense otherwise.

Piracy is wrong legally. Morally I would say not wrong if it's for backup purposes.

It sucks but it's how it is. There are DRM free options for some content so as consumers we do have a choice, including not buying.
 
You don't own most software, you license it. This has been like that since always back when Microsoft and Apple didn't exist and the big names, IBM, Xerox, HP and others were leading the way. In fact back then you couldn't even make programs for their operative systems, you had to ask them to make it or you had to license a compiler so that you were entitled to a license for running your own software.

When you buy a physical game you actually are buying a license to run the game, only that the license comes in the form of a cartridge or a disk. This has also been that way since the days of music when buying a vinyl or a tape only gave you a license for listening to it in a private location. That's why you just can't just buy a Roxette tape and broadcast it, you are breaking the license that came with the tape itself.

It's a good system? Well, it's the one that puts food in my plate as a developer but I think there should be alternatives. Laws protect copyright for quite a long time (75 years from the death of the creator is quite a long time) which is insane especially in this age when stuff is made obsolete in less than a decade. Lower that to 25 years or less.

Now piracy is a different matter. It's a conjunction of lots of good intentions, like the hacker who loves tinkering with hardware and wants to best the hundreds of engineers that created a console,the hacker that wants to have a legit backup of his game (which is totally legal in the US) so he studies and breaks the encryption, the programmers who love learning about how games are programmed and decide to build an emulator, the boy who could never afford the console and so wants to try games that were around in their youth, etc. Individually all those prepositions sound fine, however somewhere in the middle someone decides he wants to archive all the games and make them available for everyone, redistributing the games (and earning money for that, being that advertisement or donations). That's literally the only place companies can attack, and the one they usually go after.
 
Piracy shouldn't be a thing, but Ubisoft is not helping anyone with their policy. And I mean overall

The way of piracy becomes a thing is because it helps the artists who make the thing, and this is since the early days. Still, there's a lot of ways that the publisher could do to help on the preservation of the media that they fucking do

It's a losing battle for everyone
 
All of this digital stuff is not a future I will be part of. (As much as I can help it.) It's the next generation who won't know any better that these companies are banking on.
 
Guardian Monkey said:
With games your not paying for and "item" but effort and resources. Services cost money. Your chart falls apart there.
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It's the loophole from which pirates grasp. If the games were fully server-based they wouldn't be able to pirate at all, since they would need to recreate the servers to even consider that (which can be done but not while the game is "cool"). Which is the only real solution, and where the industry is headed.
 
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Which is the main reason i no longer buy Ubisoft games, they can get stuffed! with that attitude, if i don't own the game i don't pay for the game and they are legitimizing piracy as well with that nonesense, if i wanted to rent i would pay for gamepass, which costs a lot less than Ubisoft charges for their games NOT to own,

stupid company, why do they think they are in trouble!.
 
maybe instead buy button, they should write "buy license" or "buy physical edition license" it would make sense better
 
The real issue here is that Ubisoft is stupid and clueless enough to say something that is true and applies to all software purchased digitally, not just Ubi's video games. It isn't new, it isn't bullshit, people just don't like it and don't understand it.
 
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Corporations think that rules and laws are just for the common people.
That is why Ubisoft has no qualm in stealing games from users accounts, who paid for those games.
That's why companies like Facebook stole 80TB of books to train their AI. As if copyright didn't matter to them.
 
You've never owned your games, you only own a license to play them.

The Crew was a GaaS, they ended the service, your license to play the game was revoked.
 
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Laptop1991 said:
Which is the main reason i no longer buy Ubisoft games, they can get stuffed! with that attitude, if i don't own the game i don't pay for the game and they are legitimizing piracy as well with that nonesense, if i wanted to rent i would pay for gamepass, which costs a lot less than Ubisoft charges for their games NOT to own,

stupid company, why do they think they are in trouble!.
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Every publisher has exactly the same policy. Every platform holder or digital store can ban you for whatever reason and take everything you bought there from you. Making this an isolated ubisoft problem is stupid.
 
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