It never fails to amaze me that pretty much the WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD takes somewhere between five and thirty YEARS to spot the same problems - often, not until the problems ACTUALLY HAPPEN, at which point it’s often way, way too late to do much about them. My stated reason for this is PRECISELY that “I don’t want somebody else suddenly deciding to remove content that I’m counting on being able to access.” That is to say, I spotted the problem with non-physical media RIGHT AWAY, the second it first started to become a phenomenon.
I’ve been taking flak for years, from EVERYBODY EVERYWHERE, about my continued preference for physical possession of physical media - from records and tapes, to CDs and CD-ROMs, to DVDs and DVD-ROMs - over merely the ability to ACCESS media through one or another streaming service, website, or similar platform. Instead, Ubisoft appears to be joining a list of companies that believes it can sell you something and then take it away, all while including that same something in some bundled release afterwards.
There are other options out there that would not remove purchased items from people, be it local installations, allowing fans in the public to host their own servers, etc. And while I’m loathe to be one of the “there should be a law!” guys, well, there should be legal ramifications for this sort of thing. The consumer can only be jerked around so much before a clapback occurs and losing purchased assets based on the whim of the company that sold them isn’t going to be tolerated forever. The public bought a game title on Steam for 75% off, thinking it was a great deal, only to subsequently learn that they have 60 days to play the damned thing before it becomes unplayable.
STEAM WILL I NEED TO DOWNLOAD FAR CRY 5 FOR UPLAY TOO FULL VERSION
Lots of people bought DLC for titles like Assassin’s Creed 3 or Far Cry 3 for the PC versions of those games… and recently found out that all that purchased DLC is simply going away with Ubisoft shutting game servers down.Īccording to Ubisoft’s announcement, “the installation and access to downloadable content (DLC) will be unavailable” on the PC versions of the following games as of September 1, 2022:ĭLC for the console versions of these games (which is verified through the console platform stores and not Ubisoft’s UPlay platform) will be unaffected, when applicable. Assassin’s Creed III and Far Cry 3 are also available on PC in remastered re-releases that will not be affected by this server shutdown (though the remastered “Classic Edition” of Far Cry 3 is currently unavailable for purchase from Ubisoft’s own website).Ī notable addition to all of this is that the full version of Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD was on sale merely days ago on Steam’s Summer Sale, but that title is going to disappear from Steam entirely on September 1st as well. The end result is a massive disconnect between what people think they’re paying for and what they actually are paying for. Whereas the expectation by many people is that buying a digital good carries similar ownership rights as it would a physical good, instead there are discussions of “licensing” buried in the Ts and Cs that almost nobody reads. While we were just discussing how everyone occasionally gets reminded that for many digital goods these days you simply don’t actually own what you’ve bought, all thanks to Sony disappearing a bunch of purchased movies and shows from its PlayStation platform, this conversation has been going on for a long, long time.
Thu, Jul 14th 2022 03:45pm - Timothy Geigner