Unfortunatly, this isn't in Ubisoft's power. They can't just shut down a site instantly. The internet is like a street filled with criminals, where there is no law, and no authorties to control it. So if someone sees a chance to make some money, they'll do it, they don't care if they screw people over in any way. I find it difficult to blame Ubisoft in this, as it is actually completely out of their hands, and I'm going to assume the reason they are revoking keys, is becasue, whoevers stolen card was used to buy the keys, have now done a chargeback on it all. This leaves Ubisoft without any money, but if they kept the games on people's accounts they'd still have to pay for bandwidth, server capacity and so on, for products they actually never recived money from.
It's a difficult place to be in for a company. Either they take a economical hit, or they get angry customers, the problem however is, the customers in this case, wasn't Ubisofts, but some random guy who bought keys with a stolen card, sold the keys to a random store, who didn't bother to check how the keys was obtained, as all they saw was easy money. Leaving us, the customers, and Ubisoft in a very bad spot.
That's actually a rather far fetched view of the internet. If anything it's highlighting how bad the corporate monopolies and selfishness of the large conglomerate's are.
The Economic hit for Ubisoft is not a hit, they sold more games and they sold those keys to the resellers initially. I would like information as to the Fraud committed to gain those keys in the first place as the only way I can see them being obtained in such large quantities is if Ubisoft sold them with the intention to make them invalid. 200000 keys don't just appear for sale illegally...
The other myth is that piracy harms the companies. Dragon Age Inquisition highlighted this was not the case as it lasted 2 months without an available cracked copy. The biggest issue Ubisoft faces though is the harm they've done to their own brand and products. Releasing shoddy unfinished products that take months to have major fixes for, that are then dropped when they decide it's not financially feasible to fix them any further. Not to mention the Draconian DRM measures which left pirates happily playing their games and people who purchased the game unable to do so. This current action is just more of the same from a company run by accountants and not people who really and truly want to make games.
That certainly is what came over hearing Jeffrey Yohalem talking at PAX Australia.
I bought this game on steam. So I was lucky.
I wonder why should allarm bells ring if a game is sold for 50% of the original price?
Steam often sells games with large price reduction up to 90% sometimes.
How should I know up front if a price drop is legitemate or not.
Many shops and sellers use price drops te get/lure customers.
If I walk through the city I see many shops advertising their stuff with huge price drops.
I often buy keys from online reseller because they are much cheaper and no there is no trick : they just buy a big amount of keys in countries where it's cheaper and they choose to get less profit margin when selling at low price.
To sum up, they just don't rip you off like most retailers and yes it IS legit !
Never had problems with keys bought like this, but it was mostly on steam not on uplay...
Anyway it is the responsibility of the reseller to replace the key if it banned. But seriously it's just a move from Ubi to get more money either from players or resellers themselves.
Exactly. It's a damn money grab as usual. They release a sub-par unfinished game riddled with bugs (admittedly still fun to play, though the bugs get annoying VERY fast) and then instead of doubling down and trying to fix the bugs, they tarnish their image further (though I think only EA is thought of as worse) by banning a load of keys. If Ubisoft were truly having a problem, they need to take the litigation to the "fraudulent parties" themselves, not use the customer base as a stepping stone.Originally Posted by plzlol12 Go to original post
Fracking accountants...
Sorry but key sellers get their keys from poorer countries where they sell cheaper because the average person living there couldn't afford them at normal price, hence why they are sold cheaper elsewhere! But that's the problem, self entitled people in rich countries who want something for next to nothing. If everyone bought cheap cd keys then there wouldn't be a games industry and to blame it on bugs and what not is a cheap cop out to why people don't want to support the industry.Originally Posted by Trixxes Go to original post
We regularly deactivate keys that were fraudulently obtained and resold. In this case, we are currently investigating the origin of the fraud, and will update customers as soon as we have more information to share. In the meantime, customers should contact the vendor from whom they purchased the key.