I have to agree - I loathe uPlay, and am only moderately more partial to Steam. Both seem all too happy to deprive you of your games when you have no internet (since to activate "offline mode" requires you to be able to start the program normally, in online mode) and - much, much worse - they tend to munch an easy 5-10%+ of CPU usage, even when idle. You'd think they design gaming services to take up as little memory as possible, but apparently all those adverts and pointlessly complex interfaces are extremely important for us to have.
U PLAY IS THE WORST!!!! why can't it just be attached to steam. I can't play my far cry because uplay won't connect.. WTF. Orgin sucks Uplay sucks. stop trying to be steam. I could of gotten a discount for this game at work, but I purposely bought this game on steam, be cause I assumed that it would be like other steam games. BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOO, ubisoft wants to force feed us this crap!!!. I almost don't want to play this game because of uplay, but far cry is just so DAM good so that would be ludicrous. BUT DAM YOU! any way ubisoft for giving us what we never asked for.
I bought Far Cry 3 from Steam. Now, uPlay won't install the silly game ("Unable to download game information"). I have tried everything short of downloading a crack (which I know will work, but why should I have to crack something that I bought?). I know it is uPlay that is the problem. uPlay is kinda stupid to begin with. It doesn't do anything for you. They say it gives you credit thingys so that the more you play the more you benefit, but the reality is that you buy games for $50 bucks through Ubi. They toss you a bone with the little credits, but I would much prefer that they just make the games cheaper like they are on steam. Less of those perks (useless if you ask me) on steam maybe, but when I can buy a game for $10 bucks, what do I care. I think I will just give up on installing this silly game. You got my $50 bucks. Enjoy it. It will be the last Ubi game "i buy", at least until you get around to dumping uPlay.
Honestly, your website is slow too. Your games are cool, but everything else is just engineered to be stupid as a brick with a dunce cap on. I mean, even if uPlay worked it still wouldn't be useful. I don't even want to install steam on my computers, and now I am supposed to installed 3 or 4 of these "services"? It just seems like you want people to bootleg your software, makes it hard for those of us that would prefer to follow the rules. I mean, you got Ubi over there saying, "Hey, pay $50 for a game that you won't be able to install, and even if you can get it installed it won't let you play it half the time because our servers will be down, let alone the fact that we will compile profiles on your usage and make your life hell in general"...and over there you got some bootlegger saying, "Install it, run it, play it, that's all". Hmmmmm...makes it tough to be honest. I mean, I spent a day on this. With my hourly rates I could have bought 30 Ubi games for the money they cost me wasting my time trying to debug the silly uPlay app. I just don't have that kind of time to be wasting installing a game (I'd rather waste it playing one).
I guess I just won't be playing any Ubi games in the future.
By the way, I suspect that the problem is related to uPlay not being run as administrator by steam. uPlay seems to just fumble all over itself when started from steam, but you can start it running stand-alone without much trouble (though because Ubi is so stingy they won't let you install/run any steam purchased games that way). This is not a steam problem as it is the uPlay peoples responsibility to test their installation procedure. If they sell their product on steam then it should bloody well install and if they weren't so stingy they would allow you to install through uPlay directly instead of requiring you to install only from steam. So, it is Ubi's fault either way you look at it. They establish a sloppy set of installation requirements and they are surprised that it doesn't work for a lot of people? If you get it through Ubi store it might work, but those that buy it through steam are out of luck?
My next post is on the steam forums where I explain that people should probably avoid purchasing Ubi software altogether because its a carp shoot whether it is going to work for you, and nobody at uPlay seems to have a clue whats going on. Many of those that buy the game through steam will end up wasting time and effort to get noware (that's my Ubi "software" joke, noware). Their alternative is to just skip the game (like I will), or if they are dishonest they could just download a cracked version and play to their hearts content without any trouble whatsoever. Sadly, some will not be so honest as me. This is why uPlay is truly dumb. It seems to me that it encourages people to bootleg. Ubi sells expensive games and they create uPlay thinking that it will discourage bootlegging, but uPlay is just so sloppy and cumbersome that it makes it hard to be honest (not cause the $, but more cause it is just painful to use uPlay). Of course, Steam does a similar thing, however, at least with steam you can get a game for $10. So, some bootleggers might be discouraged from bootlegging for that reason. I mean, why bootleg a game if you can buy it for $10? So, maybe in that sense Steam helps prevent bootlegging, but what does uPlay do? Best that someone can say about uPlay is that it doesn't bother them to have it installed. Wow, that is a glowing review for uPlay. What is that, 5 stars for not "bugging me too much". And that's the best review you are going to get for uPlay. Most of us will tell you a quite different review that involves profanity and all sorts of nasty stinky smelly adjectives that I won't mention here (cause I'm nice like that). Most of us only dream of being able to say "uPlay doesn't bug me too much". I wish I could say that about uPlay. That is the height of appreciation for uPlay that a aspire toward. Cause then maybe I could at least be playing the $50 Ubi game that I just bought. But alas I will not be playing that game and I am stuck with the stink that is uPlay in my review. Please fix it or just dump the silly services. It does no-one any good.
Making things like uplay is pointless because 1. steam is used by most people that play pc game and 2. when you make something that is like steam (not saying you base it off of steam) but they are 99% awful. look at origin and the one we are all talking about. Uplay. Why can't people in this world do things right not just to **** up people and screw them over and just think of the short-term but the long-term. It isn't difficult. Not to say steam is perfect but they fix things that need to be done. Me personally like steam and haven't had any problems. Yet. However i have heard people say how bad steam is.