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.

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:

1. Go to: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Ubisoft
2. Click the "Settings" cog.
3. "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.

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.

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."

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.

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?"

All this has done is taught me not to BUY Ubisoft games.

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 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.

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…

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

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.

Ubisoft of 2010 (ish) had some real great games. Shame they've become what they are now.

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.

Thats exactly why i only buy from gog now, and steam only when it comes to multiplayer games.

I bought mass effect collection on the ea store 'cause it have 45% discount when it came out, only for me to find out a year later a silent notification about a game which has being revoked from my library. Reason? Ur guess is as good as mine. Tried to contact ea support, the answer? take it or lose all ur other games too (bf1, bf5 worse purchase ever, and plants vs zombies because they gift it to me). So i told them to go f themselfs and now i can't play neither mass effect nor bf1.

So yeah, fuck that shit about they "lending" us a license, its either mine or it belongs to those who navigate the sea.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_happy

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.