Assassin’s Creed Liberation delisted, unplayable even to owners starting Sept 1

https://mp1st.com/news/report-assassins-creed-liberation-delisted-to-be-unplayable-even-to-owners-starting-september-1-on-steam

by josephcsible • 4 years ago

386 274 4 years ago

mp1st.com

yomkippur4• 4 years ago

so there's no way to get a refund???!!

layer8• 4 years ago

Maybe with more punctuation there will.

jrh206• 4 years ago

Why?

hatsuseno• 4 years ago

Publisher is financially incentivized to kill the servers, maintenance, and bugfix time for this title since single purchase licenses and long term online infrastructure requirements are financially incompatible.

tomc19854• 4 years ago

There is a whole single-player game in there that doesn't need online connectivity.

pseudalopex3• 4 years ago

Ubisoft will disable online services and paid DLC for other games too.[1]

[1] https://www.techspot.com/news/95177-ubisoft-disable-online-f...

glotchimo• 4 years ago

To play the solo campaign, you will have to set your console into offline mode.

I’d like to think this would be an easy patch to at least let people down easy, but I don’t know much if anything at all in this context.

Why couldn’t they just release an “flick a switch off” update? And why would this be required in the first place?

A4ET8a8uTh03• 4 years ago

Eh, I wanna say money. You gotta pay someone to get that patch working. And then tested. And testing, based on my limited experience, invariably creates unexpected issues and costs money companies are not willing to part with.

I initially wanted to say it is a little cynical, but I am starting to think it is just fiscal prudence ( and customer can stuff itself really ).

yomkippur4• 4 years ago

think their office in Quebec is losing talent too after they enacted that bill mandating French language. English speaking engineers are leaving Montreal.

mikl• 4 years ago

Is this even legal everywhere? Can they just pull the game people had paid for, without providing a refund in countries with consumer protection laws?

oblak3• 4 years ago

EA has been routinely shutting down game servers for almost 20 years now. Legal or not, I cannot say.

In any cause, the usual targets seem to be games with annual releases. Apparently, people love buying the same games over and over. While it sucks, this is clearly not on the same level as Blizzard shutting down StarCraft battle-net servers. Lots of people would be rightfully furious.

pseudalopex3• 4 years ago

Shutting down servers is 1 thing. Breaking the single player game is another.

the_af6• 4 years ago

Game servers require a cost to operate (in money and people) and I don't expect them to stay up forever.

What's the excuse for forcibly shutting down the single player experience though?

shbooms3• 4 years ago

Steam's TOS pretty clearly states that everything you "purchase" is basically just a licensed subscription to that content.

[0] ...the rights to access and/or use any Content and Services accessible through Steam are referred to in this Agreement as "Subscriptions."

... The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement

altairprime• 4 years ago

Those terms could be invalidated by a court of law, if a court case were to reach a judge.

Double_a_922• 4 years ago

Even if I bought a subscription, why are they allowed to just cancel it?

jonathanstrange2• 4 years ago

This is not what GP asked. AFAIK, it's not legal in the EU as long as the customer has a reasonable expectation that the subscription is not time-limited, i.e., if no time limitation is clearly mentioned when the subscription is purchased. There are often clauses in EULAs stating things like "our company has the right to terminate the subscription at any time for no reason" but these are generally void and can make the whole EULA void. Otherwise, it would be legal to sell software and simply switch it off after 6 months - or, after one month, or even after one day. Clearly, that would be fraud.

The question is rather which of the EU customers will/can afford to sue Steam. My guess is they'll offer a refund for those games before it comes to a law suit.

bnj• 4 years ago

If platform licensing arrangements don’t protect customers from losing access to purchases, they should be forced to advertise them as rentals or leases and not something the consumer is buying.

Shadonototra2• 4 years ago

France tried https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-09-19-french-cou...

Then steam said you don't own the games they are selling to you

So you buy games that you don't really own with a 30% tax on the developer's paycheck on top of his local taxes, thanks Valve!

convolvatron• 4 years ago

its really puzzling how a technology so perfect for lowering cost of entry and promoting disintermediation has done the exact opposite.

scythe2• 4 years ago

That's not how it went down. The EU overruled the French law. Valve's argument was rejected by French courts and then upheld by the European courts.

"This French ruling flies in the face of established EU law which recognises the need to protect digital downloads from the ease of reproduction allowed by the Internet," said CEO Simon Little in a statement.

eikenberry5• 4 years ago

Valve is obviously right. You don't own any games sold to you. You don't own any commercial, proprietary software sold to you. On only have ever been a license holder. You own that license but are restricted by the license. IE. the same thing that keeps from from making copies and selling them is used to let them shut down the required servers whenever it stops being profitable.

If you don't like this then stop using proprietary software.

jquery5• 4 years ago

France succeeded but the corporate stooges higher up in the EU overturned it on appeal.

Natsu• 4 years ago

I think that if they plan to sunset the game, that needs to be advertised from the start, or the customers should have the right of a refund.

And then they can plan for that by unlocking the games when they would sunset them.

legalcorrection• 4 years ago

No, France tried to require the right to resell. That’s not the exact same thing as just requiring that old DRM has to degrade gracefully. I doubt the EU would have overruled that.

giancarlostoro3• 4 years ago

Or customers should start suing the devs / publishers until they re-release "as-is without warranty or DRM" versions of games. If you're no longer going to maintain it, give me the final usable build.

chii2• 4 years ago

the subtle unsaid reason is often that the publisher wants users to migrate to a different/newer iteration of the game.

They do this by killing the old version.

bacchusracine• 4 years ago

they should be forced to advertise them as rentals or leases and not something the consumer is buying.

Very much this!

And furthermore the prices need to be significantly lower as well. No one pays to rent or lease an automobile what they would pay to purchase it. No one pays to rent or lease an apartment what the sum total cost of the building is.

If these companies want to pretend this is all just a rental then they need to accept no one will be willing to pay purchasing prices for those rentals.

choward• 4 years ago

They keep using this word "own" throughout the article. I do not think it means what they think it means.

zbird3• 4 years ago

Indeed. They will learn the real meaning soon enough.

rvz• 4 years ago

You will own nothing and you will be happy. All your digital games gone like I said before. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31970488

sergiotapia• 4 years ago

This is why I purchase all of my games physical.

Edit: To clarify I have stopped buying any big titles on PC. I may splurge $2-5 on a key site but that's about it. I own console games because I want to leave my grandkids something.

josephcsible6• 4 years ago

That doesn't help though. Consider the Orange Box (HL2, TF2, and Portal). You could buy this on DVDs from a brick-and-mortar store, but playing it required you to set up a Steam account and activate it there.

nibbleshifter• 4 years ago

I distinctly recall buying HL2 from a store named "Game" shortly after release, only to find it required some shit called Steam, and the Steam key had already been redeemed.

Eventually got a working key after returning to the store and complaining vigorously, and then had to wait approximately a million hours for the game to update itself over our shit tier dialup connection and eventually become playable.

brians• 4 years ago

That’s a good start! But it doesn’t always help; I have plenty of physical copies of games that won’t work without Ubisoft servers.

scoot2• 4 years ago

If only it were that simple. A physical DVD simply reduces the download time. It typically still copies onto the console HD (the DVD being used as an annoying proof of ownership.), and still depends on online services.

trentnix• 4 years ago

Does it? I had an 80+ GB practically-day-one-download waiting when I bought Forza Horizon 5 for my XBox. The disc might as well have been a blank.

throw7• 4 years ago

My "moment" came after purchasing Batman Arkham Asylum and being hit with a request to create a Games for Windows Live Account. You could skip the GfWL account creation and I did. Soon thereafter was an update. I updated and found all of my save games were lost. Ohh, you didn't create a GfWL account, too bad you didn't create a GfWL... that's the supported configuration.

I stopped following and playing most AAA games at this point, but I was already getting older anyway. I still play video games, but I'm much more careful about the above such things.

smileybarry5• 4 years ago

GfWL tying your saves to a profile was extremely mean spirited. They justified it by “you need a profile to save games” as if you’re on a Xbox 360 designed with that requirement. Which amounted to a folder with your account ID + saves encrypted with your account key.

Offline profiles were added at some point to alleviate this but, they could’ve just started with null profiles and saved all that, clearly GfWL adoption was more important.

cardanome• 4 years ago

Physical games can still have DRM.

The best way is to buy at https://www.gog.com/

They offer lot's of DRM-free games, even newer titles so you can actually own the games and back them up wherever and however you want.

smileybarry5• 4 years ago

On PC you’re actually at a disadvantage if you do. At best it’s just the same as digital (boxed Steam key), at worst it’s some alternative DRM that stops working much before Steam/Origin/uPlay does, e.g. SecuROM, Games For Windows LIVE, etc.

NikolaNovak• 4 years ago

I do not understand focus on digital delivery platform. Seems a red herring.

If you bought this very same game on DVD, would it not still require same activation servers? It's my understanding this is ubisoft the publisher activation thing, not steam the delivery platform thing.

tenryuu2• 4 years ago

Assassins creed games as far back as AC2 on PC had uplay bundled on their game discs. Physical copies don't get around DRM, only distribution

overcast• 4 years ago

You don't own physical games either, well besides the physical plastic. You're purchasing a license to use it, this is how all software/music/movies work. They have the ability to revoke that license at any time.

dzonga• 4 years ago

with Xbox - the disk only holds the license. which is very absurd. first time you insert the disk you download the game. wish I knew this before buying an xbox one s console. xbox is pretty anaemic for single player games that don't connect to the internet.

Shadonototra2• 4 years ago

looks like there are some people at ubisoft willing to do everything to lower the stock price

looks like they'll get purchased soon, microsoft behind the scene perhaps?

tomc19854• 4 years ago

I think this is unprecendented with Steam. I have heard of games being delisted but I can't recall Valve ever removing them from peoples' libraries.

If I owned a copy of this game on Steam I'd be requesting a refund immediately; they have been known to make exceptions to the standard 2-hours rule under special circumstances.

Also, Steam has a game files backup feature, it might be a good idea to use that and wait for someone to figure out how to disable Steam DRM

Shank• 4 years ago

It's not Steam's DRM -- the game relies on a server system hosted by Ubisoft, which is being shut down on September 1st. You'll still technically be able to download and execute the game binary on Steam but it won't connect and won't let you in to actually play.

LegitShady• 4 years ago

its not steam, its ubisoft DRM servers

smileybarry5• 4 years ago

This is almost definitely because Ubisoft shipped this with some SecuROM-alike DRM and doesn’t want to keep paying pennies for activation servers. If we’re lucky, they probably even opted out of offline machine keys (because “piracy”) so that the game will stop running because reactivation will fail.

tomc19854• 4 years ago

Hmm, I have AC: Black Flag and I thought it worked fine offline. I will have to check now, because that game isn't much newer than this.

account4213• 4 years ago

They don't even need to keep paying for those activation services if they don't want to. Not when other nice people have already created a version of the game that does not rely on those services which Ubisoft could simply distribute https://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/ubisoft-uses-reloaded-c...

ConstantVigil2• 4 years ago

What will likely end up happening is the more dedicated fans of the series will do what others have done with old MMO's and make their own servers and such to ensure the game stays playable.

There may be some legal issues, but once Ubisoft does this on Sep. 1st, there are some technicalities surrounding vaporware and such that make it legal to 'own' the game without ever paying for it, etc and so forth. Running servers to make it playable again as well would also be fair-game as well as I understand it.

But I am not a lawyer, so if anyone knows better please by all means say so; but keep in mind I speak from the Canadian side of the law. So there may be differences that matter.

the_af6• 4 years ago

Note this move, crappy as it is, wouldn't turn the game into "vaporware".

I think you actually mean "abandonware". But it wouldn't, either. I was part of the abandonware community for decades -- ah, good old Home of the Underdogs -- and the sad reality is that abandonware is not a legal term, and the legal owners of games long abandoned and forgotten are sometimes petty enough to actively prevent them from being made available or playable again.

It must also be said that other authors and publishers kindly make them available for free, or at least don't interfere with preservation efforts. But abandonware, as such, is not a legal thing and nobody is entitled to playing abandoned games :(

makeitdouble• 4 years ago

Yes. From the other side of the table, there's always an option to rerelease a game as an emulated version for instance. They don't even have to do it themselves, they can just license the IP to companies willing to take the risk.

So the rights holder have no incentive to ever declare it "abandonware" nor give up on the IP, and rights last long enough that ignoring them for decades isn't enough to make them worthless.

ConstantVigil2• 4 years ago

Yes, I meant Abandonware, thanks. Sorry about that.

Hmm... I could have sworn it was legal; but it looks like it's only legal once the copyright expires and nothing prior like failure to support...

Even then, all they have to do is do what Nintendo did with the e-shop.

That said, I think there is legal grounds to take these kinds of scenarios into court to attempt to get the laws changed. Maybe not in past decades, but the current situation with digital goods basically requires that abandonware be legal; lest we are just going to roll over and give in to these companies that only care about profits solely and only.

Yes, profits are important; but so is repaying your fanbase for their loyalty. They might not be able to keep these games running forever, but that shouldn't stop people from being able to do it for themselves.

That's my nickels worth on this matter.

keyle• 4 years ago

What annoys me about this the most is the message from Steam, that sort of plays along with this.

"This game is no longer available for sale on Steam". No big deal, right.

Ok, fine, but it doesn't imply the servers going down and the title becoming unplayable...

Then 2nd message:

"Please note this title won't be accessible from <date>..."

Once again, accessible doesn't imply "the game won't start, thanks for the monies".

It's a bloody shame that I can start any games from the 90s on an emulator and they run just as fine, even content heavy. While these titles are completely riddled with DRM and screw you over after X years.

Publishers need to come clean, and after years of milking the cow, they must have a plan allowing paying customers to play the title they've been enjoying all these years. Otherwise, they should be forced to include the verbiage at release date "This title will stop working as of <date in the future>".

This kind of nonsense only promotes cracked games.

Victerius2• 4 years ago

Games were already cracked before companies like Valve started pulling them from players' libraries. If games are cracked anyway, why would studios and publishers care one way or another?

the_af6• 4 years ago

I think in many cases, movies and video games piracy is a matter of convenience. If pirated media is more convenient -- not just as in "free", but because it's less encumbered and doesn't pull this crap on you -- then paying for legal media will become less appealing.

There's a baseline of piracy, sure, but there's also making the lives of paying customers more difficult so that piracy becomes the preferred option.

JamesBarney• 4 years ago

If a pay for a title I shouldn't have to crack it to play it.

yjftsjthsd-h• 4 years ago

Even if it happens both ways, that doesn't mean that it happens with equal frequency in both cases.

Thorrez2• 4 years ago

Game companies want to avoid people downloading cracked games. If every game someone wants is available legally, then that person might decide to be 100% legal. But if some stuff isn't available legally, that person might turn to cracks for those, and then once on the cracks, continue using cracks in other situations.

givemeethekeys• 4 years ago

Whats the matter? Don't you like interpreting PR-speak? \s

A4ET8a8uTh03• 4 years ago

I think it is a very underappreciated point. Those anti-consumer actions are only fueling future piracy ( and for a good reason too.. cracked games don't suffer from the DRMs and so on ). I accepted Steam and they won a lot of goodwill from me based on their work on Proton ( although I still try to throw some money GOG way ).

But instances like these heavily undermine my getting more comfortable in Steam walled garden.

Edit: And I think am pretty deep in already. I just ordered Steam Deck. Stuff like this makes me question that decision.

scrollaway• 4 years ago

Steam isn't the guilty party in this nonsensical bullshit, Ubisoft is. Steam allows you to list titles with zero DRM, zero Steamworks integration, or zero online components just fine.

KennyBlanken2• 4 years ago

Another reason games get cracked: the anti-piracy functions significantly impact performance. Time and time again there are benchmarks showing that when Denuvo and other anti-piracy stuff is striped out (the publisher has to pay to license it, per time period), performance dramatically rises.

KennyBlanken2• 4 years ago

We shouldn't wait for publishers to self-regulate. We should have legislation prohibiting software lockouts like this.

However, the industry will always find ways around it. For example, some games force online multiplayer gameplay in order to advance your character or unlock stuff. This is 'great' when the game is popular because it encourages people to play the multiplayer, but even a year or two later if the server are up, there may not be enough people to play with/against.

So, the legislation would have to prohibit limiting/locking content or gameplay options, say, if the multiplayer options become unavailable or unusable.

beloch• 4 years ago

Expecting publishers to behave isn't the answer, since there will always be those who won't behave as well as those that simply disappear.

What is needed is laws that classify games in situations such as this as abandonware and grant users who have paid for the game carte blanche to get it operating. If copyright holders want to maintain control of a title, then there must be certain consumer expectations met under the law.

jquery5• 4 years ago

This, 100%. I already act like this is the law because it only seems fair.

ekianjo• 4 years ago

What is needed is laws that classify games in situations such as this as abandonware

This will never happen as long as they can milk games and keep on making money on 40 years old games. Mario 1 is still not abandon-ware. Its Disney's Mickey Mouse all over again.

mindslight2• 4 years ago

That would be such a limp remedy. It's basically just what can be done right now without the legal blessing.

Rather what we really need is that in order to qualify for copyright protection at all, source code (ie the original creative work) should be put in escrow. When the copyright expires or the work is abandoned, then the source code gets published as part of the public domain.

_heimdall• 4 years ago

This really doesn't feel like an important enough area to demand fresh government regulation. Consumer protection laws are meant to be a last resort when a broad chunk of the population are being actively screwed over by monopolies or entire industries. If losing access to a game originally released a decade ago fits that bill the consumer protection agency is going to be very busy.

Think of it this way - if you learn you don't like a company's practices and chose not to buy their next video game release, does that really derail your life? If not, or if a big chunk of the population wouldn't say yes, we really don't want Uncle Sam rolling in with even more reach than he already has.

guywithahat• 4 years ago

I'm going to be honest if I bought a game that said it would stop working in 10 years I'd just end up being mad when I buy it as well as when it stops working, that wouldn't really make me any happier

csdreamer7• 4 years ago

It's a bloody shame that I can start any games from the 90s on an emulator and they run just as fine, even content heavy.

Eh, not exactly true. A lot of older Windows 90s games need some tweaks to their binaries to run. See what GOG.com did.

Even a more recent game, relatively, like Fallout 3 had issues with multi-core processors that required a tweak to get past the birth scene or you would hard crash. GOG includes this and plays out of the gate. As it should be for a game that is still sold on Steam, but the publisher/dev does not bother.

Personally I just avoid games like that and stick with indie titles for new games.

account4213• 4 years ago

The key word in the GP being "emulator" so for PC games that would be DosBox or Wine (to some extend), not expecting everything to just work in current Windows versions. Even for multi-core issues the "fix" should be as simple has pretending you only have one or a small number of cores.

As it should be for a game that is still sold on Steam, but the publisher/dev does not bother.

Yes, selling sofware that does not work on current systems is something that Steam needs to crack down on although I fear that the result for many titles would just be that they are no longer sold at all. In a better world, copyright would either not exist, be much shorter so that such compatibility issues are not a big problem and/or would be forfeit when not continuing to sell the software in a functioning state.

Personally I just avoid games like that and stick with indie titles for new games.

That is a sensible strategy for you as an individual and probably the extend of what you can enact on your own. But we as a society should not just accept that more and more of a shared culture is controlled by corporations and lost when they don't deem it profitable to keep it available anymore. Copyright is a deal between creators and everyone, which is supposed to encourage more creation so that more things will be available to us all. If that deal is being abused or shown to not be a net positive for society then we CAN alter it.

wetpaws• 4 years ago

People who are buying Unisoft games deserve this

ugjka• 4 years ago

I'd want a refund

vntok2• 4 years ago

Then the editor will generate both an "average number of hours" indicator and a "replayability multiplier", and you'll be entitled to a refund based on the number of hours you played since you bought it.

hef19898• 4 years ago

Gone are the days when you could just oen software after paying a one time fee, read a purchase price. Or any content as far as that is concerned. No idea why a single player game would need a server to be playable in the first place so...

noufalibrahim• 4 years ago

Before the heavy online verification thing, I had a copy of a game which I bought (I think it was one of the Elder Scrolls games or perhaps a Prince of PErsia) which required the original DVD to start to the game even after I'd installed it.The DVD was not very high quality and shattered inside my drive (thereby destroying the drive too). I wanted to play the game but couldn't thanks to the verification thing. Finally, I downloaded a cracked version which didn't demand this of me and was able to play just fine.

It's tragic but it genuinely feels like that pirated games have better user experience than clean ones.

approxim8ion• 4 years ago

Not sure about TES, but all the Prince of Persia games had the same behaviour of needing the game disc inserted to even start. Was a very irritating countermeasure, presumably against people who used their disc to install the game on multiple devices.

Beltalowda• 4 years ago

In the early 2000s I got an Adaptec SCSI card and a bunch of SCSI CD-ROM drives for free somewhere; I had a stack of 6 CD drives with discs for the games I was playing in them all the time.

This went wrong when I was cleaning my desk and I lifted them while I was playing Baldur's Gate II, creating a big scratch on the disc. I polished it up with some toothpaste and it worked fine after that (even used that same disc to install the game later, IIRC).

Kinda ridiculous really, but it was good fun playing around with these sort of things when I was young.

was_a_dev• 4 years ago

That sounds like a valid proposal for EU legislation

wodenokoto• 4 years ago

They don’t know when it will stop working.

The solution is to convert the sales model to subscription only. If it is clear you are renting it is clear that access is limited.

It’s not great as you’d want to play after end of support, but publishers are not interested for a multitude of reasons. They want a central server for control. Control of gameplay and control of cheaters and control of pirates.

crtasm2• 4 years ago

No, they don't know when they will decide to turn off their DRM server.

We're not talking ongoing fixes/support here - just the ability to start up this single player game at all. This action encourages future piracy.

lakomen7• 4 years ago

Remember GameSpy? 100s if not 1000s of games online play destroyed over night with no means of remedy. No source released or leaked.

That was the 1st online "DRM".

I dearly miss playing Battlefield 2142 and Neverwinter Nights just to name 2, on official servers.

But I can't do it anymore because... how did it even shut down? And no one was held accountable for it. No legal repercussions.

account4213• 4 years ago

NwN did have workarounds for online play after GameSpy went poof and I believe Beamdog's Enhanced Edition does restore official online support - no idea if it is any more future poof than GameSpy was.

everdrive• 4 years ago

Don't buy Ubisoft games, clearly. Games which require servers to work at all (vs. just the mulitplayer components working) are also a big no. This is likely a good thing: it will educate gamers about unnecessary DRM.

dreamcompiler• 4 years ago

Exactly this. I try to avoid any software that requires an internet connection to work or continue working, unless an internet connection is obviously necessary. Taking perfectly good software and ruining it by making an internet connection mandatory for DRM purposes does not constitute "obviously necessary."

Looking at you Microsoft Office, Quickbooks, and every Adobe product.

zamalek2• 4 years ago

I stopped after the first Denuvo saga. I am so glad that I did. GoG remains my first stop for buying games, Steam a very cautious second.

cubesnooper• 4 years ago

Ubisoft actually sells some DRM‐free games on GOG—the first Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry 1 and 2, Rayman Origins (but not Rayman Legends).

If you have disk space to spare, I would recommend downloading GOG’s offline installers as a backup. The risk of the service disappearing or games you’ve bought being removed seems pretty low, but DRM‐free offline installers are just as good as the classic “physical copy,” provided you actually saved them!

yomkippur4• 4 years ago

Last game I purchased was Far Cry the one with mammoth. funny thing is I have less than 1 hour. I bought it based on the trailer footage and I was disapointed.

Ubisoft appears to be largely propped up by generous tax credit in French speaking parts of the world and I don't think its going to last.

Question is who stands to buy them out? Their market cap is way overvalued.

midasz• 4 years ago

Primal? Maybe it just wasn't for you but that's one of my favorites. There are so few stone-age games around and Primal was just great.

hintymad• 4 years ago

In principle, yes. In practice it's really hard to find a game like Assassin's Creed that offers me a relaxed world, where I can decide how engaged I want to be. Most of the team I just wander around a beautiful historical world and occasionally use long-range weapons like a sniper without worrying about dying every few minutes. This kind of experience, at least for me personally, is really hard to beat.

npteljes3• 4 years ago

Or just imagine that you don't own the game in the first place, imagine that you're buying an opportunity to experience something for a while. Better laws could help of course, but I'm not holding my breath.

Situations like this will educate nobody about anything though. Many irate forum posts will be written, and the course of the world, and these people's lives will change about 0 percent. If gamers, as a group, would be able to learn anything, there wouldn't be hype for early access titles, or they wouldn't pre-order, but I'm not seeing either.

The actual best thing to happen to these franchises, in my view, is pirates freeing them from their corporate shackles that is DRM. This helps them to be actually relevant and to give people good experiences consistently - although, you could argue that this also helps them not sink into their well deserved irrelevance, so in the end piracy is helping to sell the original like in the case of Windows or Photoshop, or how people knowing the music drives the sale of concert tickets. Still, at least pirated copies can be used by the people who are genuinely missing the experience after the DRM servers inevitable shut down.

lousken2• 4 years ago

That's why games like these should have dedicated servers as an option. Why is this acceptable in the cloud era where everyone can spin up their own server for a few bucks?

cmckn3• 4 years ago

I think it's a nice idea, but it just won't happen.

The game companies won't offer managed game servers, because it's a totally new, small-market line of business outside their core competency. They won't open-source the server and let users run it themselves, because myriad licensing/IP/legalese reasons. Even if they did open source it, the stack likely isn't designed to scale down to a few bucks a month on the public cloud -- most users interested in running their own server wouldn't be happy with the actual cost of doing so. The handful of folks willing to pay for it won't move the needle.

josephcsible6• 4 years ago

You make it sound like this is a hard problem that studios don't know how to solve, but it's been solved for decades. There's still a bunch of third-party Quake III Arena servers you can play on, for example.

Drew_• 4 years ago

Nobody's asking for "managed servers" they're asking for server binaries, which can be easily released without source code and was common practice for decades before games turned into live services.

lousken2• 4 years ago

as drew says - i am asking for binaries that i can run on a VM, just like minecraft or csgo

i dont need a source code, i need a binary and a config file, some decent error logging and some basic documentation with how to get it running/common issues/requirements

that's it

toyg9• 4 years ago

There should be a law: if you sell an entertainment experience with significant online elements, and you shut down such elements, you should be forced to opensource the server. Just like that, dump the code wholesale on the internet somewhere.

Victerius2• 4 years ago

Source code is often reused in other products. Corporate studios would balk.

toyg9• 4 years ago

And? They'd figure it out. Millions of businesses have to deal with changes in law every day.

In fact, there is a good chance this would result in standardising the most basic aspects of online activity (license checks etc) into free opensource libraries, saving such corporations a decent amount of money in the long run.

josephcsible6• 4 years ago

We'd need a way to handle all of the companies who'd say "oops we lost the source".

pseudalopex3• 4 years ago

Escrow.

Yoofie• 4 years ago

Their incompetence should not be an excuse to avoid or skirt the law. If they lose it, they should be fined or penalized. Once they start bleeding money, I guarantee that this problem will go away.

the_biot3• 4 years ago

No, there should not be a law that forces anyone to give away their property. That's just complete nonsense.

You should draw your own conclusion as to what you spend your money on, and possibly you might conclude that "buying" online games that can be taken away from you at any time is a waste of money. But you can't go from there to "we must take away intellectual property from these capitalist swine!".

toyg9• 4 years ago

Is patent expiration "taking away IP from capitalist swines"...? Obviously not. IP itself is not a natural right - it's a legal construct with clear limits.

The nonsense is thinking that requiring certain interests to follow rules that benefit society, is "taking away intellectual property". Any such law would obviously not be retroactive, so any publisher could decide whether they want to produce any such online element going forward. If they do, they will know their work will have to be disclosed on a free license at the end - effectively working in the same way as patents.

josephcsible6• 4 years ago

Right now, the law forces you, the consumer, to give away your property, the copy of Assassin's Creed Liberation that you bought. (Don't believe me? Go ask a lawyer if it's legal to crack your copy's DRM to keep it working after they do this.)

int_19h• 4 years ago

you can't go from there to "we must take away intellectual property from these capitalist swine!".

As a society, we certainly can. So IP owners should carefully consider the possibilities here before robbing people blind. That some shiny 50-year-old copyrights you've got there - would be such a shame if they were all to suddenly expire, no? Congress has that power, and more.

account4213• 4 years ago

It's not their property - they have only been granted exclusive control over it FOR A LIMTITED TIME in order to incentivize them to create more so that in the end there is more for everyone to enjoy. If they are using that control over the "IP" to take the content away then why the rest of us honour our end of the deal.

dbetteridge• 4 years ago

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/full-federal-court-con...

Sounds illegal if anyone is based in Australia and feels like giving the ACCC a nudge.

“This case sets an important precedent that overseas-based companies that sell to Australians must abide by our law. All goods come with automatic consumer guarantees that they are of acceptable quality and fit for the purpose for which they were sold, even if the business is based overseas,”

Apocryphon• 4 years ago

Hm, sounds as ironic as when Amazon was taking away ebook copies of 1984.

toyg9• 4 years ago

RMS had predicted all this, as usual.

sylware• 4 years ago

We know ubisoft has been a sidekick of microsoft (in my country they are the same ppl). But removing that big game from PC, very weird: maybe they don't want to maintain technically the game anymore, or go to epic.

zac23or4• 4 years ago

That's theft. The theft pure and simple, ancient, which has been around forever. Nothing new.

shbooms3• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, per Steam's TOS, you do not own anything you "purchase" on their platform. Instead you "subscribe" to access of whatever games/other content you've paid for:

...the rights to access and/or use any Content and Services accessible through Steam are referred to in this Agreement as "Subscriptions."

... The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services.

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement

To me, that's their business if they want to operate that way and folks can choose to accept that and be a customer if they so desire. I think what's really wrong is that nowhere on their store pages do they use the word "Subscription" and instead they use the word "Purchase". This should not be allowed and is false advertising, plain and simple.

zac23or4• 4 years ago

I think what's really wrong is that nowhere on their store pages do they use the word "Subscription" and instead they use the word "Purchase".

Perfect.

This should not be allowed and is false advertising

The result of false advertising is theft.

blibble• 4 years ago

the terms of service don't override the law

the consumer rights directive in the Uk/EU specifically states remedy (i.e.: refund) if vendors remove features from a purchased digital service

shakna• 4 years ago

But also note that the limitation of liabilities section does not apply to UK, EU, Australian or New Zealand customers.

For example, the statement on Australia:

FOR AUSTRALIAN SUBSCRIBERS, THIS SECTION 7 DOES NOT EXCLUDE, RESTRICT OR MODIFY THE APPLICATION OF ANY GUARANTEE, RIGHT OR REMEDY THAT CANNOT BE SO EXCLUDED, RESTRICTED OR MODIFIED, INCLUDING THOSE CONFERRED BY THE AUSTRALIAN CONSUMER LAW (ACL). UNDER THE ACL, GOODS COME WITH GUARANTEES INCLUDING A GUARANTEE THAT GOODS ARE OF ACCEPTABLE QUALITY. IF THERE IS A FAILURE OF THIS GUARANTEE, YOU ARE ENTITLED TO A REMEDY (WHICH MAY INCLUDE HAVING THE GOODS REPAIRED OR REPLACED OR A REFUND). IF A REPAIR OR REPLACEMENT CANNOT BE PROVIDED OR THERE IS A MAJOR FAILURE, YOU ARE ENTITLED TO A REFUND.

Which means that removing access to the purchased item, does in fact entitle you to a refund.

nightski• 4 years ago

I understand one does not own the game as that entitles the user to additional rights. But I feel like the user should own the license and they should not be able to revoke your ability to download/play it barring they go out of business or something.

chris_wot• 4 years ago

What, an unending subscription? If they want to end the subscription, then they can refund the person.

gruez3• 4 years ago

Unless your definition of "theft" is a very expansive one that covers everything from swiping something from a store to downloading movies, the act that ubisoft is doing really isn't comparable to anything that's "ancient, which has been around forever". Back in the "ancient" world there certainly wasn't pieces of software running on networked turing machines that required authentication servers to function. The closest analogy would be some sort of widget that required a proprietary input from the manufacturer to continue functioning (eg. a car that required OEM blinker fluid to work). The manufacturer refusing to provide such inputs to the end user would definitely be something that negatively affects the end user and might even be a tort and/or run afoul of anti-consumer laws, but it's certainly not comparable to someone breaking into your house and making off with your car. You still have the original physical disk and/or bits, after all.

zac23or4• 4 years ago

If you SOLD something and somehow REMOVE or the ability to use it, it's theft. Whether it's done using modern technology (software) or old technology (crowbar) is not important.

chrysoprace• 4 years ago

Wouldn't be surprised if the ACCC (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission) went after them. This is almost certainly breaking the ACL, and all customers would be eligible for a refund.

smileybarry5• 4 years ago

Do note that this doesn’t appear to be affecting the Remastered rerelease, though keep in mind that would require an additional purchase as the original release does not grant you access to it.

Ah, great. So poor little Ubisoft doesn’t want to pay for the activation servers of Liberation HD and Liberation HD++. How nice of them to drop just the older, original version and not even offer the working remastered version to existing owners.

lelandfe• 4 years ago

not even offer the working remastered version to existing owners

I can't believe they're not doing this. The remastered version is frequently on sale for just $20, and revoking access is clearly a PR nightmare.

If Ubisoft so dearly needs to shut down these servers, why not just gift existing owners the upgrade?

toyg9• 4 years ago

Probably because the cost of the PR nightmare is either not easily quantifiable, or simply an acceptable loss; wheras the potential "forced profits" by people having to buy the remaster are fairly easy to predict.

Jiro• 4 years ago

Because if they do, the next time they sell a remastered anything, people will think "I don't need to buy this because I'll get it anyway when the servers for the original version run out," costing them sales.

usrusr• 4 years ago

But that PR fallout hits Valve much harder than Ubisoft, because unlike Ubisoft Valve still has a reputation to lose. That reputation is the main source of the stranglehold Valve is holding the entirety of PC publishers in (except Blizzard). They might in fact consider the PR nightmare a positive side-effect of shutting down, leveling the playing field.

olodus• 4 years ago

When something like this happens they should be required to hand over the server software. Even better would be to have to open source the code but atleast give out the server. Then the company would have a choice; either you pay for the server but can keep the game harder locked down for Intellectual property reason or whatever. Or you can cut the server cost but risk loosing a bit of your control over it.

alexklarjr• 4 years ago

pffft, just download it from torrent, as you do for any abandonware and Nintendo games, it had been cracked for 10 years, what you are expecting, windows backward compatibility or respecting your rights by Steam, created by former Micro$oft employee?

the_af6• 4 years ago

"This is yet another reason why owning digital games is frowned upon by some consumer groups, as you technically never own the game themselves given this thing can happen."

I think things like GOG or Humble Bundle are better, because they don't "phone home" when you try to play games you bought there (unless, of course, they are actually Steam keys).

They could get delisted, but if you backed up the game you can still play it.

That said: what a crappy situation. Are they at least giving the money back to customers?

donatj• 4 years ago

Given how decent a company Valve is, and the rules they put on things for sale in their store, I'm honestly surprised that Valve even has store terms that allow this kind of shenanigans.

If I was them I would lock that down, because this is a bad look.

jimbob45• 4 years ago

Valve tends to be pretty decent. If I had to guess, it’s cheaper and easier for them to say “yes” and let public opinion turn that into a no than to say no being the scenes and have to dicker with Ubi lawyers.

smoldesu• 4 years ago

Valve's rules are pretty permissive, all-in-all. And like many other people in this thread have already pointed out, many digital-only games can't ever truly be "owned". You're given a license, and that license is subject to terms that you agree to when you use it. It sucks, but this is the path we chose when we decided that software should be a proprietary production.

MikusR• 4 years ago

Steams refund policy is the result of a lawsuit.

CursedUrn• 4 years ago

Ubisoft seems like an outlier on Steam. The way many of their games just launch UPlay, which then does its own downloading and ownership check is very strange and awkward.

wincy• 4 years ago

Luckily there’s a SKIDROW release. 2.85GB ISO that’ll work until the end of time and nobody can turn it off.

zbird3• 4 years ago

If only we could pay the original publisher/developer for a DRM-free version of the game, that would be revolutionary.

zac23or4• 4 years ago

And that's how regulations are born.

stubish2• 4 years ago

Better article at https://www.techspot.com/news/95177-ubisoft-disable-online-f... , which tells us it is 15 games (not one) and Ubisoft's end (affecting all delivery mechanisms including physical, not just Steam/Valve)

Personally, I stopped buying Ubisoft games years ago, because a month of their subscription service is cheaper than their games even at 75% off sales, and actually owning the game means nothing as this article demonstrates. I'm not sure how this business model is sustainable.

3np3• 4 years ago

That article only mentions multiplayer and DLC to become inaccessible, while OP is about the single-player game being unplayable. Not clear if that's the only one of the 15 titles or not.

Space Junkies is a notable outlier, as it launched three years ago. It's a multiplayer-only VR game, and for some reason, Ubisoft is still selling it (for as much as $20) without even mentioning that it will become completely unplayable in two months.

Wow.

jmyeet• 4 years ago

This will only ever change if actions like these affect the sales of future titles. But like many things most people just don't care.

It's kind of shocking this happening with a 10 year old game.

This whole online required for a single player game (because piracy) is really ridiculous. So many dumb things are done with DRM and the like because of "piracy". Remember DVD regions? The unskippable FBI warning? DVD "encryption"?

After 5-10 years games should just go DRM and server free. Not sure how we can enforce that without materially affecting sales however.

SpaceManNabs• 4 years ago

stuff like this is why i sometimes still buy physical games. ofc nothing stops people from just disabling the reading of the disc from the software side if not connected to internet or wtv. buying discs is only going to be slightly more "own your stuff"

giancarlostoro3• 4 years ago

Why bother buying a single game from this game publisher / developer? That's my takeaway.

robertwt7• 4 years ago

can't they be sued for this? don't we all own our rights once we bought it? unless if it is listed somewhere in steam's terms and agreements when we purchase the game.

If so, then this is totally messed up, knowing that I have 300+ games on steam that can be removed one day without my consent. Even after I purchase it with my own money. Insane

BLKNSLVR• 4 years ago

I think there's a lot of valid crossover between this situation and the one recently discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32010317 (Playstation Store removes Studiocanal movies, no refunds offered)

crooked-v• 4 years ago

While I doubt many people would take a day off work to do so, this seems like it would be an easy case to take to small claims court in most parts of the US to force a full refund.

jonathanstrange2• 4 years ago

There is also a small claims procedure in the EU for these kind of things:

https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers...

CHB0403085482• 4 years ago

That's why I always get discs. Oh wait...

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/07/god-of-war-ragnaroks-...

jquery5• 4 years ago

I just requested a steam refund, to try and send a message. I have no playtime, I bought it on sale for $5, but this is gross. I will stop “buying” steam games entirely if this starts happening on a regular basis.

Update: that was fast, my refund request was rejected because it has been “more than 2 weeks since my purchase”. I opened a new refund request with much more pointed language and told them it’ll be the most expensive $5 they ever stole. I’m fit to sue over this, it’s not even about the money. I have a large steam library and I do not want them to get away with this.

3np3• 4 years ago

Do keep us updated!

I guess you're in the US? (Judging from the use of $ and suing being the next step of escalation)

Would be interesting if individuals with Steam accounts in EU/UK/AU who "bought" the game and request a refund also report their experience, considering the differences in consumer protection.

jquery5• 4 years ago

Got my refund rejected a second time. Customer support nonexistent, got the same rejection reason.

Grr. Anyone else have a different experience?

account4213• 4 years ago

I don't think they even read what you write for the refund request if its outside of their policy. Either that or they are OK with losing over 1000 EUR in sales and counting over a 7 EUR refund and never bother to respond with anything that doesn't look like an automated message.

zbird3• 4 years ago

And this is the reason why I buy DRM-free on GOG. I always check GOG for games before Steam.

muzani2• 4 years ago

A lot of people blame Steam, but I'm willing to accept this risk. I didn't buy games before Humble Bundle and Steam, and if it all collapses, I'd probably pirate it somewhere or get it off sites similar to Home of the Underdogs.

The licensing allows them to do things like this, but frankly, the odds of it happening is extremely low, like 1 in a thousand, and the lower prices make up for the risk.

UberFly• 4 years ago

As sucky as this is, I still prefer the Steam model (and the chance of something like this happening) over a bunch of dusty disks and trying to find the latest patch on some sketchy website.

dusted• 4 years ago

And this is why we need finished products that does not require Internet access, on physical media.

lemoncookiechip• 4 years ago

For the people blaming Steam here in the comments.

This is an Ubisoft title, meaning, Steam is just a glorified launcher for Uplay which then launches the game itself. The only fault Steam has in this, is not being clearer in the store front (which is still Ubisoft editing).

Ubisoft is the one not providing refunds. Ubisoft is the one shutting down online servers. Ubisoft is the one who asked for it to be delisted.

There's a lot of things to be angry for against Steam, but this isn't it.

trumpablehump• 4 years ago

Steam should not allow such schemes to be sold in their store.

int0x20• 4 years ago

But I'm buying from/through Steam and expect that refunds will be handled by them as well

breadloaf• 4 years ago

Game can't run without a server and server owner decided to shut them down? Then game is a defective product and customer is eligible for full refund of the game. Those servers will be running forever or should not be necessary at all.

vntok2• 4 years ago

Lol no that's not how it works. Imposing a company to maintain expensive equipment forever in echange for a ~$60 one-shot payment is crazy.

account4213• 4 years ago

They don't have to architect their games to require that. Even for multiplayer games they can always choose to provide the server side parts for others to host.

wiseleo• 4 years ago

What expensive equipment? It's a VM.

timwaagh• 4 years ago

Steam should simply disallow this. People invest thousands into a games collection. Having games become inaccessible is not acceptable. If they do not and this becomes the norm nobody will even bother with Steam anymore. People will just move to gamepass and other cheaper platforms that do not give the consumer any sense that they own games. I'll be trying to move to gog a bit more because of this, but my Steam collection is big.

Lutzb• 4 years ago

Something similar happened with Rayman Jungle Run on Android Play Store. The license server is no longer running and as such the game cannot be started anymore. I took Ubisoft at least a year before they removed the software from Android Play Store. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pastagames...

okamiueru• 4 years ago

This seems like a what should be a non-issue, and good PR for very little effort.

Push an update to steam where DRM has been disabled. Arguably DRM has only ever inconvenienced legitimate users. Explain the situation saying it has reached end of life, so DRM protections will be disabled.

The developer/publisher gets this in return: - Good PR - No DRM server costs - Continued sale (/or make it PWYW and give proceeds to a cause).

t0bia_s• 4 years ago

One of many reasons why I buy games excslusively on GoG.

Btw, why is this game delisted?

LocalH• 4 years ago

If this isn't just a huge miscommunication on the part of Steam and/or Ubisoft, then this is theft, plain and simple. When you pay for a specific product, the manufacturer should never have the legal right to unilaterally remove your access to that product. This isn't a subscription service, where the terms are different (and you're paying much less than you would have in this situation).

idonotknowwhy• 4 years ago

Might be available on a torrent site

pdimitar• 4 years ago

As long as publishers pull crap like this, piracy will not only keep going. It will thrive and increase.

roxaaaane• 4 years ago

It has been increasingly annoying to play video games nowadays, take the recent Call Of Duty releases, I don't like playing multi-player I just want to play the 3-4 hours campaign and yet to do that I need a Battle.net account and need to be online, also I can't just install the single player campaign I need Warzone.

Ubisoft is also a hot pile of mess with their Ubisoft buggy client that constantly needs an internet connection.

lakomen7• 4 years ago

WARNING: back button shenanigans

lakomen7• 4 years ago

Steam has been evading responsibility for a very long time. Actively lobbying and smearing politicians and law people.

The right to sell used games? They have paid a lot for this not to pass. 14 days of withdrawal not applying to games in the EU? Them.

Not that Epic games is any better.

I'm not buying games online anymore. I used to spend a lot when I had the income. It's a scam a scam that is covered up with dollar bills. Justicia is blind. In the EU you can buy everything if you have enough money. It goes without saying that the same is true in the US, but EU was supposed to be different, better. They're not. And Valve has bought laws and averted lawsuits with their monetary power.

shyn3• 4 years ago

When Rogers was down if you didn't have any games on disc your games wouldn't launch if you had them on gamepass for the series x.

The industry is staring to make this normal.

HelixEndeavor• 4 years ago

You don't own digital media unless it's 100% DRM-free and can be installed and used offline. I try always to buy my games from GOG if I can for this reason. Your GOG games will still work long after their service is dead. If they lose a license and have to pull a game from sale, so long as you have a backup, you can always install the game you bought from the original EXE. I back up my GOG games to CD, DVD, and BD discs for that retro flair and because they're a lot more difficult to accidentally delete.

npteljes3• 4 years ago

If they were cool, they'd release a patch that'd make the game DRM free, and then abandon it.

MacroChip• 4 years ago

Web3 games will never be shut down (if properly decentralized). The "game server" is effectively pay-as-you-go.

NFTs grafted on to web2 games is a start of player owned gaming, but true web3 games will be wholly player owned.

These shutdowns (along with things like Diablo's Error 37 launch) are why gamers will gravitate to games they can't get rug pulled on.

b3nji• 4 years ago

Remember the days when you bought a PC game, it came in a beautiful box, with a nicely illustrated manual, and you owned it?

Install the game, 20 minutes later you were off.

Also, it was fun to find the bugs and found that sometimes they were useful in game.

It's a shame people don't really own games nowadays, isn't it?

vagab0nd• 4 years ago

This brings up an interesting question: What happens to games sold on Steam today, 10 years later? Will I still be able to play them on the latest OS then? If so, how would Steam implement it?

Assassin’s Creed Liberation delisted, unplayable even to owners starting Sept 1

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