Ubisoft have not had the best couple of years. From not releasing any games so far this year, to only releasing two last year, they’re banking on a lot of fan favour for their upcoming slate of Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, amongst others.
Safe to say with their latest announcement, they’re going about it all wrong. In a recent email sent to individuals worldwide, Ubisoft have made everyone aware of their intent to cancel ‘inactive’ accounts. The idea is sound and almost understandable, with them no doubt wishing to lighten the load on their servers where they can, but the execution is leaving a lot to be desired.
Are Ubisoft being Anti-Consumer here?
The email in question (below) doesn’t explain a great deal, other than the fact the user(s) in question will face losing their account completely if they don’t log in or click the button on the email within the 30 days of it being suspended. It also conveniently doesn’t mention that for those people who end up losing their accounts for whatever reason, then the games linked to such email account will be unable to be accessed, potentially forever.
Understandably this hasn’t gone down well with Ubisoft’s customers, or in fact video game players in general, with some labelling it “anti-consumer”, others promising never to buy another Ubisoft game again and some even contacting the FTC in the hopes they’ll investigate.
Whether the contentious move is as illegal as some think, or whether it’ll be conveniently hidden in the small print somewhere is up in the air, but it is hard to argue for the move being anything other than anti-consumerist. Lose your account? Start another and repurchase any games you may already have. Otherwise, miss out.
Related: Another Assassin’s Creed is on the way with Ubisoft Announcing Assassin’s Creed: Forgotten Temple
There’s plenty of reasons for a complete changeover to a digital game library, but a lack of control over our purchases in this way is a major no to all-digital, and a yes to keeping the physical market of video games alive.
With such a huge twelve months ahead for Ubisoft, it perhaps was the wrong time to roll out the new account policy, and it’ll be interesting to see how much, if at all, this’ll affect sales of their next two games, Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
Related: Will All of Ubisoft’s 11 Reported Assassin’s Creed Games Under Development be Xbox-Exclusive?
Perhaps the decision is influenced by the fact they’ve not had as big a market share over the last few years as they’d like, and this is their way into forcing players back onto their games? If this is the case, it’s repugnant and a terrible look. If it’s just a space saving idea, it’ll cause more problems than the space saved will solve. No matter how this move is spun, they gain very little, and annoy or alienate a lot of their fans.
This hopefully will open the door for more conversations on consumer rights for digital products, as for now many digital licences are actually granting access to their products, not the actual ownership of them, hence the legality of moves like this being fine in the eyes of the law, even if it is a particularly gross move on behalf of the long-time-supporting Ubisoft fans.
If you take nothing else from reading this, make it to go and log in to your Ubisoft account now. Some of us here have thirteen years of game licenses linked to our accounts, so we hate to think of anyone losing their account access.
What do you think here? Is Ubisoft right? Wrong? Will this affect any future purchases of Ubisoft games? Let us know in the comments!
Follow us for more entertainment coverage on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
![Lies of P's Game Director Jiwon Choi Discusses the Game, Disney and the Darker Sides of Pinocchio [EXCLUSIVE]](https://fwmedia.fandomwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/16134750/lies-1-768x432.png)
