Ubisoft claims consumers were given "clear and conspicuous" notice that they were only buying a "limited license" to access the game.
www.pcgamer.com
So... where in the process of buying a game is it stated its just a rental?
Why buy any games if they can just take them off you later?
Renting a Ubisoft game for anything over $1 is questionable now, and yet they "sell" the rental files to people and expect us to pay them full price
Glad last Ubisoft game I bought was on PS3, so over 15 years ago. At least I don't care now if I only rented it, as I think 15 years is a reasonable trade.
There should have been an offline mode—that's my two cents. Supposedly, the offline mode is already in the game files somewhere; it's just never been used. I'm perfectly fine with them terminating the online service, but you didn't pay just for the online service—you paid for a game too. So, either they refund people their money, or they create an offline version. That would be a reasonable solution where everyone wins.
This is probably why games like GTA V or Forza Horizon have both offline and online versions. It ensures companies avoid these unnecessary legal disputes, which bring no positive outcomes while losing money for shareholders and agitating consumers.
The thing is, most of the time the license thing doesn't mean anything. As long as i can play the game, i am more then happy to NOT own the license or own the game. But when you exercise this legal loophole as an excuse to dismantle or remove access something i bought, its BS.
AAA designed always on, always connect services (even when they are SP offline elements), designed the back end coding to work like this and unnecessarily so. I know its for Copyright etc, but its also lazy and poor programming to not be able to remove those elements. Even now i don't really see why the crew couldn't be updated to work without whatever the hell prevents it from running.
As others have pointed, why would it matter what we do with the content when they deem there's no money managing/hosting it? it falls into spite and greed. if they can't make all the money they'll see to it that no one can. Its a scorched earth policy.
Sure its not going to be easy or 100% clean solution for every game to make games playable offline, hell i just care for SP elements to survive or just allow me to run multiplayer maps in SP.
But the gaming industry inflicted this on themselves. They took up the burden and i don't believe that a multibillion dollar industry can't come up with a solution. I have one: don't do it. Allow users to download and play offline away from their gaming clients. Allow community support and hosting.
if the industry refuses to help, then there's only one alternative: Piracy. We don't want that, but frankly they're the only ones who have a chance of preserving our gaming history and culture. The industry certainly doesn't care and in fact actively attempt to strangle all attempts. nintendo i'm looking at you.
As always, if you haven't done so yet, help support the stopkillinggames.com team. put the thumb screws on the industry to be more responsible.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram